Das Kapital Versions of Reality Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph) or (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #4

The determination of the magnitude of value by labour-time is therefore a secret hidden under the apparent movements in the relative values of commodities. (1.4.9)

What's money? What's price? We use these concepts every day, but we rarely think about where they come from. The real answers are hidden, Marx says. According to him, it's totally possible for us to do something daily without understanding it much.

Quote #5

It is however precisely this finished form of the world of commodities—the money form—which conceals the social character of private labour and the social relations between the individual workers, by making those relations appear as relations between material objects, instead of revealing them plainly. If I state that coats or boots stand in a relation to linen because the latter is the universal incarnation of abstract human labour, the absurdity of the statement is self-evident. Nevertheless, when the producers of coats and boots bring these commodities into a relation with linen, or with gold or silver (and this makes no difference here), as the universal equivalent, the relation between their own private labour and the collective labour of society appears to them in exactly this absurd form. (1.4.10)

Marx is admitting it's kind of crazy to see commodities as tradable specifically because they all contain labor time. But that's his theory of how capitalism functions.

Quote #6

The religious reflections of the real world can, in any case, vanish only when the practical relations of everyday life between man and man, and man and nature, generally present themselves to him in a transparent and rational form. The veil is not removed from the countenance of the social life-process, i.e. the process of material production, until it becomes production by freely associated men, and stands under their conscious and planned control. (1.4.16)

Marx is saying religion vanishes when everyday life becomes more rational—and that the fetishism of commodities will only disappear once production is owned by everyone and takes place according to a plan. Long story short, according to Marx, the fetishism of commodities will only disappear under communism.