“Ricardo's "science" was founded on the principle that capital is more or less immobile and labor highly mobile. We are enjoined today to worship the consequences of Ricardo's science, despite the fact that the assumptions on which they are based have been reversed: capital is highly mobile, and labor virtually immobile -- libertarian conservatives lead the way in rejecting Adam Smith's principle that "free circulation of labor" is a cornerstone of free trade, in keeping with their contempt for markets”

— Noam Chomsky

except for the weak
Z Magazine, February 1995 http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199505--.htm.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999

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Noam Chomsky 334

american linguist, philosopher and activist 1928

Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) Political scientist

Source: The Political Economy of International Relations (1987), Chapter Six, Multinational Corporations, p. 260

“The immobile had been changed to mobility.”

Albert Gleizes (1881–1953) French painter

after 1920, The Epic, From immobile form to mobile form (1925)

“The capitalist mode acts to accumulate capital through the hiring of labor power, but is marked by the cyclical alternation of labor mobilization and labor displacement; each intake of labor power uproots some prior adaptation, while each sloughing off of labor power creates a new cohort of the unemployed.”

Eric Wolf (1923–1999) American anthropologist

Afterword, p. 386.
Europe and the People Without History, 1982

“It is the secret scandal of capitalism that at no point has it been organized primarily around free labor.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Eleven, "Age of the Great Capitalist Empires", p. 350

“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 (1923–1999) American anthropologist

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

“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 (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Source: 1860s, First State of the Union address (1861)
Context: 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. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation.