falls as rent to the owners of land and capital.
Rent is defined by Rodbertus as "all income obtained without personal exertion solely in virtue of possession."*24 It includes two kinds of rent—land-rent and profit on capital.
Rodbertus then asks, As every income is the product of labour alone, what is the reason that certain persons in society draw incomes (and, moreover, original incomes) without stirring a finger in the work of production? In this question Rodbertus has stated the general theoretical problem of the theory of rent.*25 The answer he gives is the following:—
Rent owes its existence to the coincidence of two facts, one economical and one legal. The economic ground of rent lies in the fact that, since the introduction of the division of labour, the labourers produce more than they require to support themselves in life and to allow them to continue their labour, and thus others also are able to live upon the product. The legal ground lies in the existence of private property in land and capital. As, therefore, through the existence of private property the labourers have lost all control over the conditions that are indispensable to production, they cannot, as a rule, do otherwise than produce in the service of the proprietors, and that according to an agreement previously made. These proprietors impose upon the labourers the obligation of surrendering a part of the product of their labour as rent, in return for the opportunity of using the conditions of production just mentioned. Indeed this surrender even takes an aggravated form, for the labourers have to give up to the owners the possession of their entire product, receiving back from the owners only a part of its value as wage, and a part that is no more than the labourers absolutely require to keep them in life and allow them to continue their labour. The power which forces the labourers to agree to this contract is Hunger. To let Rodbertus speak for himself:—
"As there can be no income unless it is produced by labour, rent rests on two indispensable conditions. First, there can be no rent if labour does not produce more than the amount which is just necessary to the labourers to secure the continuance of their labour, for it is impossible that without such a surplus any one, without himself labouring, can regularly receive an income. Secondly, there could be no rent if arrangements did not exist which deprive the labourers of this surplus, either wholly or in part, and give it to others who do not themselves labour, for in the nature of things the labourers themselves are always the first to come into possession of their product. That labour yields such a surplus rests on economic grounds that increase the productivity of labour. That this surplus is entirely or in part withdrawn from the labourers and given to others rests on grounds of positive law; and as law has always united itself with force it only effects this withdrawal by continual compulsion.
"The form which this compulsion originally took was slavery, the origin of which is contemporaneous with that of agriculture and landed property. The labourers who produced such a surplus in their labour-product were slaves, and the master to whom the labourers belonged, and to whom consequently the product itself also belonged, gave the slaves only so much as was necessary for the continuance of their labour, and kept the remainder or surplus to himself. If all the land, and at the same time all the capital of a country, have passed into private property, then landed property and property in capital exert a similar compulsion even over freed or free labourers. For, first, the result will be the same as in slavery, that the product will not belong to the labourers, but to the masters of land and capital; and secondly, the labourers who possess nothing, in face of the masters possessing land and capital, will be glad to receive a part only of the product of their own labour with which to support themselves in life; that is to say, again, to enable them to continue their labour. Thus, although the contra