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Wasn't Marx himself critical of the notion that only labor creates
value? I recall something about nature being a partner in the
enterprise.
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CB: In the terms of _Capital_ human labor is the source of all exchange-value.
Use-value comes from nature and humanity.
Here's a little ditty on it:
Karl Marx
Critique of the Gotha Programme
1. "Labor is the source of wealth and all culture, and since useful labor is possible
only in society and through society, the proceeds of labor belong undiminished with
equal right to all members of society."
First part of the paragraph: "Labor is the source of all wealth and all culture."
Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values
(and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is
only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power. the above phrase is to
be found in all children's primers and is correct insofar as it is implied that labor
is performed with the appurtenant subjects and instruments. But a socialist program
cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that lone
give them meaning. And insofar as man from the beginning behaves toward nature, the
primary source of all instruments and subjects of labor, as an owner, treats her as
belonging to him, his labor becomes the source of use values, therefore also of
wealth. The bourgeois have very good grounds for falsely ascribing supernatural
creative power to labor; since precisely from the fact that labor depends on nature it
follows that the man who possesses no other property than his l!
abor 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 labor. He can only
work with their permission, hence live only with their permission.
Let us now leave the sentence as it stands, or rather limps. What could one have
expected in conclusion? Obviously this:
"Since labor is the source of all wealth, no one in society can appropriate wealth
except as the product of labor. Therefore, if he himself does not work, he lives by
the labor of others and also acquires his culture at the expense of the labor of
others."
Instead of this, by means of the verbal river "and since", a proposition is added in
order to draw a conclusion from this and not from the first one.
