pages, I could not choose but confine myself to one side—that of pointing out the errors into which Rodbertus had fallen. I consider it due to the memory of this distinguished man to acknowledge, in equally candid terms, his conspicuous merits as regards the development of the theory of political economy. Unfortunately, to dwell on these lies beyond the limits of my present task.
Notes for this chapter
A tolerably complete list of the writings of Dr. Karl Rodbertus-Jagetzow is to be found in Kozak's Rodbertus' sozialökonomische Ansichten, Jena, 1882, p. 7, etc. I have made use by preference of the second and third Social Letters to Von Kirchmann in the (somewhat altered) copy published by Rodbertus in 1875, under the name of Zur Beleuchtung der sozialen Frage; also of the tract Zur Erklärung und Abhilfe der heutigen Kreditnoth des Grundbesitzes; and of the fourth Social Letter to Von Kirchmann (Berlin, 1884), published under Rodbertus's bequest by Adolf Wagner and Kozak under the name Das Kapital. A few years ago Rodbertus's interest theory was subjected to an extremely close and conscientious criticism by Knies (Der Kredit, part ii. Berlin, 1879, p. 47, etc.), with which in its most important points I fully agree. I feel myself, however, bound to take up the task of criticism independently, my theoretic point of view being so different from that of Knies that I cannot help looking at many things in an essentially different light.
Zur Beleuchtung der sozialen Frage, pp. 68, 69.
Soziale Frage, p. 71.
Erklärung und Abhilfe, ii. p. 160 note.
Soziale Frage, p. 56; Erklärung, p. 112.
Soziale Frage, pp. 87 90; Erklärung, p. 111; Kapital, p. 116.
Soziale Frage, p. 146; Erklärung, ii. p. 109, etc.
Soziale Frage, p. 32.
Ibid. p. 74, etc.
Soziale Frage, p. 33; similarly and more in detail, pp. 77-94.
Ibid. p. 115, and other places.
Ibid. p. 150; Kapital, p. 202.
Soziale Frage, pp. 115, 148, etc. See also the criticism of Bastiat, pp. 115-119.
Ibid. p. 123, etc.
Soziale Frage, p. 106.
Ibid. p. 107; similarly pp. 113, 147. Erklärung, 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 other