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Only when the stock of wealth can be related to human energy by purchasing living energy as "labor power", offered for sale by people who have no other means of using their labor to ensure their livelihood: and only when it can relate that labor power to purchased machines - embodiments of past transformation of nature by human energy expended in the past - only then does "wealth" become "capital".

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More quotes by Eric Wolf

Everywhere in this world of 1400, populations existed in interconnections.

There may be "pie in the sky when you die" but how the pie is dished out on the ground has considerable existential relevance.

Preface (1997)

Man rises up against nature by means of what we would today call culture.

In order to understand what the world would become, we must first know what it was.

The capitalist state exists to ensure the domination of one class over another.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Eric Wolf (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.