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Wretchard on Twitter
"It's possible that the recent setbacks of the abortion cause are indirectly driven by the realization that humans are valuable, not the bestial burdens assumed by the eugenicists. https://t.co/38nTFSlfKJ"

Humans existed as a species earlier, and even exhibited religious activity as evidenced by burials, but as organized communities in the modern sense that can be considered in some way civilized we need look back no further than the Neolithic Revolution and the beginning of agriculture some 12,000 years ago. For over 75% of the time since then there still is no evidence of an ethical identity of humans as individuals meeting a special consideration or Mercy. That we may consider as arriving with Judaism no earlier than 1,200 BC. The acceptance that human life, including that of women and children, was not just of utilitarian value to a ruler or conqueror but had intrinsic worth regardless of social station became widespread and generally if not universally accepted at least in the West only within the last millenium, and it's period of dominance over those who wielded power over the majority of humanity as well as their subjects was but a fraction of that time. Now that humane position is visibly unraveling. It has been condemned as a legacy of Imperialism, without consideration of the murderous values that either preceded the exaltation of humanity which we may call Humanism or the forms of barbarism which lurked in dark corners and now return under new labels.

On the Theory of Value.

Socialism is based on the equitable distribution of the fruits of labor, meaning physical labor. Marx plundered David Ricardo's Labor Theory of Value. This was intended as a counter to the earlier Mercantilist theory which was somewhat vulgarly thought to depend on wealth being based on the regulated trade in plundered colonial assets and the even earlier Feudal social and economic system with wealth based on land tenure.

Marx failed to see that the Mercantilist model failed on its own merits as shown by financial implosion of Spain after importing the gold of the New World. Every effort to use state power to limit innovation and trade failed. In this Marxism was no different than the advocates for earlier would be productive elites, feudal or mercantile.

What Marx never worked out was the valuation of non-physical labor, like that of intellectuals such as Marx. It was clear that Intellectuals are Alienated and full of grievance but for all the pleading about "Knowledge Workers" there is no credible way short of the market in a Capitalist system to value and identify as a good the product of intellectuals. Intellectuals should be the last people to argue for scrapping the market because they are most likely to have the their work value revalued down by a bureaucrat.