turbulo at aol.com wrote:
>
> Social labor does not arise or disappear with capitalism. Man is by
> nature a social laborer. The achievement of Marx's theory is to have
> demonstrated how the social character of labor asserts itself under
> capitalism through its opposite: the seemingly random exchanges among
> mutually indifferent commodity producers.
>
Yes. Thank you. How clear. My life has value; my work has value. But, in the crucible of capital they have none; the only thing that has value is capital -- which is created by the fact that almost all human labor is taken from the worker and used in the generation of profit. Viewed from the standpoint of capital, labor is a cost and its content is meaningless. If the left could do one thing in the next twenty years, it should be to teach everyone to look at themselves and at the world not from the stand point of capital. We need an "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for the 21st century.
Joanna