ntly invested in pearls, which, at the usual rate of interest, must yield him a clear annual profit of £5000. We now ask, How is it to be explained that he gets this income?
Rodbertus answers, Interest on capital is a profit of plunder, got by curtailing the natural and just wages of labour. Wages of what labour? Of the five labourers who sorted and strung the pearls? That cannot well be; for if, by curtailing the just wages of the five labourers, one could gain £5000, then the just wages of these labourers must, in any case, have amounted to more than £5000. That is to say, these wages must have amounted, in any case, to more than £1000 per man,—a height of just wages that can hardly be taken seriously, especially as the business of sorting and stringing pearls is very little above the character of unskilled labour.
But let us look a little farther. Perhaps it is the labourers of an earlier stage of production from the product of whose labour the jeweller obtains his stolen profit; say the pearl-fishers. But the jeweller has not come into contact at all with these labourers, for he buys his pearls direct from an undertaker of pearl-fishing, or from a middleman; he has therefore had no opportunity whatever of deducting from the pearl-fishers a part of their product, or a part of the value of their product. But perhaps the undertaker of pearl-fishing has done so instead of him, so that the jeweller's profit originates in a deduction which the undertaker of the pearl-fishing has made from the wages of his labourers. That, however, is impossible; for clearly the jeweller would make his profit even if the undertaker of the pearl-fishing had made no deduction whatever from the wages of his labourers. Even if this latter undertaker were to divide among his labourers as wages the whole £100,000 that the pearls so obtained are worth—the whole £100,000 he receives from the jeweller as purchase money—then it only comes to this, that he makes no profit. It in no wise follows that the jeweller loses his profit. For to the jeweller it is a matter of complete indifference how this purchase money which he pays is distributed, so long as the price is not raised. Whatever then be the flights of our fancy, we shall seek in vain for the labourers from whose just wages the jeweller's profit of £5000 could possibly have been withheld.
Perhaps, however, even after this illustration there may be some readers still unconvinced. Perhaps they may think it certainly a little strange that the labour of the five pearl stringers should be the source from which the jeweller can exploit so considerable a profit as £5000, but yet not quite inconceivable. Let me therefore bring forward another and still more striking illustration,—a good old example by which many an interest theory has already been tested and found false.
The owner of a vineyard has harvested a cask of good young wine. Immediately after the vintage it has an exchange value of £10. He lets the wine lie undisturbed in the cellar, and after a dozen years the wine, now of course an old wine, has an exchange value of £20. This is a well-known fact. The difference of £10 falls to the owner of the wine as interest on the capital contained in the wine. Now who are the labourers that are exploited by this profit of capital?
During the storage there has been no further labour expended on the wine. The only conceivable thing is that the exploitation has been at the expense of those labourers who produced the new wine. The owner of the vineyard has paid them too small a wage. But I ask, How much ought he "in justice" to have paid them as wage? Even if he pays them the entire £10, which was the value of the new wine at the time of harvest, there stills remains to him the increment in value of £10, which Rodbertus brands as profit of plunder. Indeed even if he pays them £12 or £15 as wages, the accusation of plundering will still hang over him; he will only be free from it if he has paid the full £20. Now can any one seriously ask that £20 should be paid as "just wages of labour" for a product that is