Prosthetic Conscience

Lincoln on labour

[…]labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed; that labor can exist without capital, but that capital could never have existed without labor. Hence they hold that labor is the superior – greatly the superior – of capital.

— Abraham Lincoln, 1859

The whole speech is here. It’s an interesting speech, in which he argues that wage labour is not exploitative, because most people are neither employers nor employees, and most wage labourers do not stay wage labourers their whole lives. That might have even been true in Lincoln’s time, but it’s certainly not true today! It’s also worth noting that his main point was to contrast free labour with chattel slavery.

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