Excerpt from Capital and Labour
Let us suppose a man brought up in civilized life, cast upon a desert land - without food, without clothes, without fire, without tools. We see the human being in the very lowest state of helplessness. Most of the knowledge he had acquired would be worse than useless; for it would not be applicable in any way to his new position. Let the land upon which he is thrown produce spontaneous fruits - let it be free from ferocious animals - let the climate be most genial - still the man would be exceedingly powerless and wretched. The first condition of his lot, to enable him to maintain existence at ail, would be that he should labour. He must labour to gather the berries from the trees - he must labour to obtain water from the rivulets he must labour to form a garment of leaves, or of some equally accessible material, to shield his body from the sun - he must labour to render some cave or hollow tree a secure place of shelter from the dews of night. There would be no intermission of the labour necessary to provide a supply of food from hand to mouth, even in the season when wild fruits were abundant. If this labour, in the most favourable season, were interrupted for a single day, or at most for two or three days, by sickness, he would in all probability perish. But, when the autumn was past, and the wild fruits were gone, he must prolong existence like some savage tribes are reported to do - by raw fish and undressed roots.
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