Some quotes from Marx's Grundrisse (Winter 1857-58; published in the 1930s).
On technological change:
It is sometimes said about machinery that it saves labor. However…the mere saving of labor is not characteristic thing, for with the help of machinery human labor performs actions and creates things which without it would be absolutely impossible of accomplishment (p. 389).
On trade:
…nations may continually exchange with one another, may even continually repeat the exchange over an ever-expanding scale, without for that reason necessarily gaining in equal degrees (p. 872)
On methodology:
The ‘laws and conditions of the production of wealth’ and ‘the laws of the distribution of wealth’ are the same laws under different forms, and both change, undergo the same historical process; are as such only moments of a historic process (p. 832).
Productive labor:
Productive labor is only that which produces capital…Labor becomes productive only by producing its own opposite. (p. 305).
Needs depend on the level of development
In production resting on capital, the existence of necessary labor time [to produce subsistence for the worker] is conditional on the existence of superfluous labor time [labor time appropriated by the capitalist].
[But] In the lowest stages of production...few human needs have yet been produced, hence few to be satisfied. Necessary labor is thus restricted not because labor is productive but because it is not very necessary. (p. 398).
And for some fun:
On John Ramsey McCulloch, 1st prof of political economy at U College London:
“past master in pretentious cretinism” (p. 411n).
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