“The essence of capital is its ability to mobilize social labor by buying labor power and setting it to work. This requires a market in which the capacity of human beings to work can be bought and sold like any other commodity: buyers of labor power offer wages, which sellers accept in return for a commodity, their own labor.”

—  Eric Wolf

Source: Europe and the People Without History, 1982, Chapter 12 The New Laborers, p. 354.

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Eric Wolf24
American anthropologist 1923–1999

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