| Subject: | [socialcredit] nature and capital | | Date: | Monday, June 5, 2006 11:10:09 (EDT) | | From: | Triumphofthepast <Triumphofthepast @...com>
|
The word "capital" is derived from Latin "caput," "head," and is defined by Ruskin as "head, or source, or root material; material by which some derivative or secondary good is produced." This would include raw materials. Or what else would you call something like seed-corn? What else would you call a woodpile? Neither of these are tools even in the widest sense. Seed-corn derives from ancient materials of nature that have been modified by man continuously for thousands of years. A woodpile consists of materials collected direct from nature (let us generously assume), but even then, the very act of collecting it is to expend labor on it and so turn it into "capital."
Indeed, the very term "raw material" is quite different from "nature." "Raw material" is an economic term and implies material from nature directed toward production. Maybe Keith would agree with me that rocks of Pluto are not raw materials in any sense. Nor are wild edible berries in a forest raw materials in and of themselves. If I pick them to eat, they become consumer goods. If I pick them to bake in a pie, they are capital.
Douglas in the passage quoted by Wally doesn't follow Ruskin's paradigm, quite. He distinguished two "agencies" (i.e., actors) of production -- labor and capital (the latter including the Cultural Heritage) and three "factors" of production -- the two actors plus raw materials, considered to be passive. So Douglas uses the term "capital" more narrowly, but this does not mean a substantive difference. Both call for WISE USE of nature.
Michael
|
nature and capital
Reply to this message