 that comes to us through labour in the shape of a good ought to be put solely to the account of human labour, because labour is the only original power, and also the only original cost with which human economy is concerned."*20 This proposition also is put down as an axiom, and Rodbertus does not go any farther into the subject.
The actual labourers who produce the entire product in the shape of goods have, at least "according to the pure idea of justice," a natural and just claim to obtain possession of this entire product.*21 But this with two rather important limitations. First, the system of the division of labour, under which many co-operate in the production of one product, makes it technically impossible that each labourer should receive his product in natura. There must therefore be substituted, for the claim to the whole product, the claim to the whole value of the product.*22
Further, all those who render society useful services without immediately co-operating in the material producing of the goods must have a share in the national product; such, for example, as the clergyman, the physician, the judge, the scientific investigator, and, in Rodbertus's opinion, even the undertakers, who "understand how to employ a number of labourers productively by means of a capital."*23 But such labour, being only "indirect economic labour," may not put in its claim of payment at the "original distribution of goods," in which the producers alone take part, but only at a "secondary distribution of goods." What then is the claim which the actual labourers have to put forward, according to the pure idea of justice? It is a claim to receive the entire value of the product of their labour in the original distribution, without prejudice to the secondary claims on salary of other useful members of society.
This natural claim Rodbertus does not find recognised in present social arrangements. The labourers of to-day receive as wages, in the original distribution, only a part of the value of their product, while the remainder 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 indispe