chaz wrote:
>In _Capital_, Marx emphasizes labor as the source of all value ...
the fat guy wrote:
"Labour is *not the source* of all wealth and all culture. *Nature* is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labour, which is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labour power. ...insofar as man from the beginning behaves towards nature, as an owner, treats her as belonging to him, his labour becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wealth. The *bourgeoisie* have very good grounds for falsely ascribing *supernatural creative power* to labour; since precisely from the fact that labour depends on nature it follows that the man who possesses no other property than his labour power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labour. He can work only with their permission, hence live only with their permission." (from _critique of the gotha programme_, not my emphases)
which is not to condone the prometheanism implicit, though not complete, in this passage, nor to collapse value into wealth, but rather to point to this passage as clearly complicating the phrase: 'labour as the source of all value'.
angela