"Asked to name an instance in which his thinking had changed over the past 10 years, Mr. Obama cited the 1996 welfare reform bill signed by former President Clinton. He said he opposed the measure at the time because he believed it would have 'disastrous results,' denying millions of women economic support without providing them with job training, child care or health benefits. He said he now believes the law has been largely successful."
"'It worked a lot better than a lot of people anticipated,' he said. He then added, speaking more broadly, 'I am absolutely convinced that we have to have work as the centerpiece of any social policy.'"
"In the summer of 1996, President Bill Clinton delivered on his pledge to 'end welfare as we know it.' Despite howls of protest from some liberals, he signed into law a bill forcing recipients to work and imposing a five-year limit on cash assistance."
"'It worked a lot better than a lot of people anticipated,' he said. He then added, speaking more broadly, 'I am absolutely convinced that we have to have work as the centerpiece of any social policy.'"
("The Obama-McCain Faith Forum", NY Times 8/16/2008)
"In the summer of 1996, President Bill Clinton delivered on his pledge to 'end welfare as we know it.' Despite howls of protest from some liberals, he signed into law a bill forcing recipients to work and imposing a five-year limit on cash assistance."
("From Welfare Shift in ’96, a Reminder for Clinton", NY Times 4/11/2008)
"The conformism which has dwelt within social democracy from the very beginning rests not merely on its political tactics, but also on its economic conceptions. ... The Gotha Program [dating from the 1875 Gotha Congress] already bore traces of this confusion. It defined labor as 'the source of all wealth and all culture'. Suspecting the worst, Marx responded that human being, who owned no other property aside from his labor-power, 'must be the slave of other human beings, who… have made themselves into property-owners.'"
(Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History)
"Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power. the above phrase is to be found in all children's primers and is correct insofar as it is implied that labor is performed with the appurtenant subjects and instruments. But a socialist program cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that lone give them meaning. And insofar as man from the beginning behaves toward nature, the primary source of all instruments and subjects of labor, as an owner, treats her as belonging to him, his labor becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wealth. The bourgeois have very good grounds for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power to labor; since precisely from the fact that labor depends on nature it follows that the man who possesses no other property than his labor power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labor. He can only work with their permission, hence live only with their permission."
(Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program)
"The worker appears to sell his 'labour' in exchange for a wage. The capitalist 'combines' that labour with machines, raw material and the labour of other men to produce finished products. As the capitalist owns the machines and raw material, as well as the money to pay the wages, is it no 'natural' that he should also own the finished products which result from the 'combination of these factors'?
"This is what appears to occur under capitalism. However, probing beneath the surface, Marx comes up with a series of striking observations which can only be denied if one deliberately refuses to examine the unique social conditions which create the very peculiar and exceptional 'exchange' between labour and capital. In the first place, there is an institutional inequality of conditions between the capitaists and workers. The capitalist is not forced to buy labour-power on a continuous basis. He does it only if it is profitable to him. If not, he prefers to wait, to lay off workers, or even to close his plant down till better times. The worker, on the other hand (the word is used here in the social meaning made clear precisely by this sentence, and not necessarily in the stricter sense of manual labourer), is under economic compulsion to sell his labour-power. As he has no access to the means of production, including land, as he has no access to any large-scale free stock of food, and as he has no reserves of money which enable him to survive for any length of time while doing nothing, he must sell his labour power to the capitalist on a continuous basis and at the current rate. Without such institutionalized compulsion, a fully developed capitalist society would be impossible. ... If people are living under conditions where ther is no economic compulsion to sell their labour-power, then the repressive juridical and political compulsion has to deliver the necessary manpower to the entrepreneurs; otherwise capitalism could not survive under these circumstances."
(Ernest Mandel, Introduction to Capital: Volume 1)
