How It All Goes Down
We're looking at just six chapters of Das Kapital, but boy, are they doozies.
Chapter 1 defines the commodity, a good or service that's bought and sold. These are some dry definitions, but here they are in one quick paragraph. We learn that use-value is what you can use a commodity for; exchange-value is what you can trade it for. Concrete labor is a specific type of work, such as cooking; abstract labor is just the quantitative measurement of the amount of time any kind of work takes. The value of a commodity is measured in the socially necessary (or average) amount of time it takes to produce it. Finally, the fetishism of the commodity is its ability to be more than just a plain object—it takes on characteristics reflecting society's labor.
Chapter 4 gives us the general formula for capital: E=mc². Wait, no, that's Einstein. Marx tells us that capital is the M-C-M' process. That's buying in order to sell for more value: M stands for money, C stands for commodity, and M' (pronounced M-prime because that's how Marx rolls) stands for the new, greater amount of money after the sale. Chapters 6 and 7 ask where that extra value comes from. Answer: it comes from you, the worker. Your labor-power is the commodity you sell, and you contribute more value to your employer than you yourself cost. You're paid what you cost, but your employer pockets the extra value. Chapter 7 also describes the labor process, calling work a condition of human existence regardless of what economic mode of production is in place.
Chapter 10 is all about the battle in 19th-century Europe over the length of the working day—or as we'd call it, the length of the workday. Factory-owners tried to make their employees toil away for as long as possible, including children. But the working-class movement successfully pressured the government for legislation limiting the amount of time they had to work.
Chapter 14 tells us about the division of labor and manufacture. Capitalists liked to take individual handicraft workers and shove them all under one workshop roof because it made work more efficient, which spells more profit. But this led to workers becoming over-specialized. They'd conduct one part of the production process over and over instead of making the whole commodity themselves, and thus they became narrower as human beings.
That's Das Kapital in a hurry.