 that such a supposition contains in itself a simple impossibility, I need merely point out that it is equally opposed to experience and to Rodbertus's own theory. It is contrary to experience; for experience shows that the usual effect of a restriction of supply in any branch of production is not a depression of the wages of labour, but a raising of the prices of product. And again, experience does not bear witness that the wages of labour, in such trades as require a large investment of capital, stand essentially lower than in other trades—which would necessarily be the case if the demand for a higher profit had to be met from wages instead of from prices of product. And it is also contrary to Rodbertus's own theory. For that theory assumes that the labourers in the long run always receive the amount of the necessary costs of their maintenance as wages,—a law which would be sensibly violated by this kind of equalisation.
It is just as easy to show conversely that, if the value of the products remained unaltered, a limitation of profits could only take place by raising the wages of the labourers in the trades concerned above the normal scale, which again, as we have said, is contrary to experience and to Rodbertus's own theory.
I may venture then to claim that I have described the process of the equalisation of profits in accordance with facts, and in accordance with Rodbertus's own hypothesis, when I assume that the return of profits to their normal level is brought about by means of a steady alteration in the exchange value of the products concerned. But if the year's product of ten labourers in the shoemaking trade has an exchange value of £550, and the year's product of ten labourers in the jewellery trade has an exchange value of £1500,—and it must be so if the equalisation of profits assumed by Rodbertus always takes place,—what becomes of his assumption that products exchange according to the labour incorporated in them? And if, from the employment of the same amount of labour, there result in the one trade £50, in the other £1000 as rent, what becomes, further, of the doctrine that the amount of rent to be obtained in a production is not regulated by the amount of capital employed, but only by the amount of labour performed in it?
The contradiction in which Rodbertus has involved himself here is as obvious as it is insoluble. Either products do really exchange, in the long run, in proportion to the labour incorporated in them, and the amount of rent in a production is really regulated by the amount of labour employed in it,—in which case an equalisation of profits is impossible; or there is an equalisation of the profits of capital,—in which case it is impossible that products should continue to exchange in proportion to the labour incorporated in them, and that the amount of labour spent should be the only thing that determines the amount of rent obtainable. Rodbertus must have noticed this very evident contradiction if he had only devoted a little real reflection to the manner in which profits become equalised, instead of dismissing the subject in the most superficial way with his phrase about the equalising effect of competition.
But we are not done with criticism. The whole explanation of land-rent, which, with Rodbertus, is so intimately connected with the explanation of interest, is based upon an inconsistency so striking that the author's carelessness in not observing it is almost inconceivable.
There are only two possibilities here: either, as the effect of competition, an equalisation of profits does take place, or it does not. Assume first that it does take place. What justification has Rodbertus for supposing that the equalisation will certainly embrace the whole sphere of manufacture, but will come to a halt, as if spellbound, at the boundary of raw production? If agriculture promises an attractive profit why should not more capital flow to it? why should not more land be cultivated, or the land be more intensively cultivated, or cultivated by more improved methods, till the exchange value of raw pro