Democratic Underground - think of it this way

Thanks for considering my ideas and posting a thoughtful reply, by the way. Much appreciated.

If a hundred of us were cast out into the wilderness, we could get to work building and farming and producing, and could eventually prosper. No bank, no capital, no capitalism. Now, take 100 bankers and stock brokers and put them in the wilderness and tell them to start running a bank and being capitalists. All would starve. No wealth, no work would ever be produced by capitalism. No bank, no capital and no capitalism on the other hand are needed for working people to produce wealth.

Lincoln explained the difference between the two ways of looking at this well, I think.

Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

Abraham Lincoln
Address to Congress
(December 3, 1861)
http://www.infoplease.com/t/hist/state-of-the-union/73.html

Reply #165: think of it this way [View All]

Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.