Knowledge is power : $b A view of the productive forces of modern society and the results of labor, capital and skill. — John Shaqi
Knowledge is power : $b A view of the productive forces of modern society and the results of labor, capital and skill.Knight, Charles
Philosophy
Knowledge is power : $b A view of the productive forces of modern society and the results of labor, capital and skill.
Knight, Charles
Industrial arts; Industries
Here, indeed, is a material alteration in the wealth of a man left on an
uninhabited island. He had a regular supply of goats and fish; he had
the means of cooking this food; he had a house lined with goats' skins,
and bedding of the same; his body was clothed with skins; he had
provisions in abundance to offer, properly cooked, when his old
companions came to him after three years' absence. What gave him this
power to labour profitably?--to maintain existence in tolerable comfort?
Simply, the gun, the knife, and the flint, which he accidentally had
with him when the ship sailed away. The flint and the bit of steel which
he hardened out of the gun-barrel gave him the means of procuring fire;
the gun became the material for making harpoons, lances, and hooks, with
which he could obtain fish and flesh. Till he had these tools, he was
compelled to eat seal's flesh. The instant he possessed the tools, he
could make a selection of what was most agreeable to his taste. It is
almost impossible to imagine a human being with less accumulation about
him. His small stock of powder and shot was soon spent, and he had only
an iron gun-barrel and a knife left, with the means of changing the form
of the gun-barrel by fire. Yet this single accumulation enabled him to
direct his labour, as all labour is directed even in its highest
employment, to the change of form and change of place of the natural
supplies by which he was surrounded. He created nothing; he only gave
his natural supplies a value by his labour. Until he laboured, the
things about him had no value, as far as he was concerned; when he did
obtain them by labour, they instantly acquired a value. He brought the
wild goat from the mountain to his hut in the valley--he changed its
place; he converted its flesh into cooked food, and its skin into a
lining for his bed--he changed its form. Change of form and change of
place are the beginning and end of all human labour; and the Moskito
Indian only employed the same principle for the supply of his wants
which directs the labour of all the producers of civilized life into the
channels of manufactures or commerce.
But the Moskito Indian, far removed as his situation was above the
condition of the man without any accumulation of former labour--that is,
of the man without any capital about him--was only _in the second stage
in which the power of labour can be exercised_, and in which it is
comparatively still weak and powerless. He laboured--he laboured with
accumulation--but he laboured without that other power which gives the
last and highest direction to profitable labour.
Let us state all the conditions necessary for the production of Utility,
or of what is essential to the support, comfort, and pleasure of human
life:--
1. _That there shall be Labour._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account