It’s the Extraction of Surplus Value, Stupid

February 1st, 2007

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Posted by ChrisG at 10:00 am

Further to the last post, and observations about pathological addiction to the narrowing perspective of the technical fix, a quotation from Paul Burkett’s Marx and Nature:

Quantitatively, capitalism only ascribes value to nature insofar as its appropriation requires commodity-producing labour, even though nature’s contribution to production – and to human life more generally – is not materially reducible to this labour of appropriation. In short, the value form qualitatively and quantitatively abstracts from nature’s useful and life-giving characteristics, even though value is a particular social form of wealth – a particular social objectification of both nature and labour. (emphasis added)