rklärung, i. p. 123.
Soziale Frage, p. 148.
This illustration is not given by Rodbertus; I only add it to put the difficult line of argument more clearly.
Soziale Frage, p. 94, etc.; particularly pp. 109-111. Erklärung, i. p. 123.
It may be advisable, in the interest of the English reader, to put this theory of land-rent in a different way.
According to Rodbertus, all rent is a deduction from product, and an exploitation of the labour that produces the product. Both land-rent then and capital-rent (profit) must be accounted for by this deduction, and only by this deduction. Now rent cannot emerge at all unless the necessary resources are provided. The owners give these resources; the labourer works with them; the owner takes his rent from the product, and, naturally enough, calculates it as a percentage on the amount of the resources he provides. In reality, however, rent does not depend on the amount and duration of these resources, but on the amount of labour employed and exploited.
But resources are of two kinds, land and capital. In manufacturing the resources consist of capital alone. The profit exploited from the manufacturing labourers is calculated as a rate on the capital, and comes to be ascribed to the capital. Under the competitive system profits tend to an equality over the whole field, and accordingly we should expect the landowner to get simply the same rent for the resources he lends (land) as the capitalist gets for the resources he lends (capital). But as a fact the landowner gets more; in fact, sufficient to pay another rent, which is properly called land-rent. How is this?
The reason is that in manufacture there are two outlays of capital, one for wages and one for raw materials. But there is only one field of exploitation, wages. There is, then, in manufacturing a portion of capital employed which yields no profit, and the profit that is made in the total manufacture, being calculated on this portion plus the portion employed in paying wages, the rate of profit is lower than it would be otherwise.
Now in agriculture there is indeed only one source of rent or profit, labour, but there is no outlay for raw materials. The profit thus in agriculture is calculated on a smaller capital, and so must leave, over and above the ordinary manufacturing rate of profit, a surplus which is land-rent.—W. S.
Erklärung, ii. p. 303.
Erklärung, p. 273, etc. In the posthumous tract on "Capital" Rodbertus expresses himself more severely on the subject of private property in capital, and would have it redeemed, if not abolished (p. 116, etc.)
Soziale Frage, p. 69.
Kredit, part second, p. 60, etc.
Erklärung und Abhilfe, ii. p. 160; similarly Soziale Frage, p. 69.
Der Kredit, part second, p. 69: "What Rodbertus brings forward as his sole reason, viz. that 'labour is the only original power, and also the only original cost with which human economy is concerned,' is simply, in point of fact, untrue. What surprising blindness it is not to see that in the case of a landlord the effectual power of the soil in our limited fields could not be allowed 'to lie dead' by uneconomic men, could not be wasted in growing weeds, etc. etc. So absurd an opinion would certainly in the long run justify any one in defending the proposition that the loss to a landlord of X acres, and the loss to a people's economy of Y square miles, represents no 'economical loss.' "
See Knies, Der Kredit, part second, p. 64, etc.: "A man who wishes to 'produce' coal must not simply dig; he must dig in a particular place; in thousands of places he may perform the same material operation of digging without any result whatever. But if the difficult and necessary work of finding the proper place is undertaken by a separate person, say a geologist; if without some other and "intellectual power" no shaft is sunk, and so on, how can the 'economic' work be digging only? When the choice of materials, the decision on the proportions of the ingredients, and such like, are made by another person than by him who rolls the pills, are we to say that the economical value of thi