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conception of "natural wealth" or "natural resources."
Both the Commission and the present Council for the
Study of the Productive Forces of the Country had been
studying our natural resources. According to the Marxian
point of view, the only correct one, the term "productive
forces" denotes those forces which take part in the process of production. These forces are, first, the live force
of the worker applied to the object of his labour, and the
object itself of this labour, which, together with the tools
of production, constitute the means of production.
Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both Man and
Nature participate, and in which Man of his own accord starts,
regulates, and controls the material reactions between himself and
Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces,
setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces
of his body, in order to appropriate Nature's productions in a form
adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world
and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature
(Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Charles H. Kerr edition, page 197). In the
process of labour, man adapts himself to external nature, yet he does
so not passively, but actively, placing between himself and nature,
if necessary, the tools of labour, the tools of production. An
instrument of labour is a thing, or a complex of things, which the
labourer interposes between himself and the subject of his labour,
and which serves as the conductor of his activity (Ibid., page 199).
Coal, ores, running water, etc., become forces of production when drawn into the process of production, when
taking part in it and jointly with the live force of the
worker equipped with the tools of production creating
products of labour. The question arises, should those
reserves of coal, or oil, or forest lands which take no part
as yet in the earth or upon its surface, and which take no
part as yet in the process of production, be considered
forces of production? I believe such a designation would
be wrong. They are merely natural substances, not yet
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