wise.
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 this material body, this medicine, is a product of nothing but the hand labour employed in it?"
Of course I do not mean to put forward the rate of interest as the cause of the smaller valuation of future goods. I know quite well that interest and rate of interest can only be a result of this primary phenomenon. I am not here explaining but only depicting facts.
The appropriateness of these figures, which seem strange at the first glance, will be seen immediately.
More exact criticism on this head I postpone till my second volume. To protect myself against misunderstandings, however, and particularly against the imputation of considering undertaking profit to be a "profit of plunder" when it exceeds the usual rate of interest, I may add a short note.
In the total difference, between value of product and wages expended, which falls to the undertaker, there may possibly be four constituents, essentially different from each other.
2. A payment for the undertaker's own labour. This of course is equally unobjectionable, and in certain circumstances, as in the using of a new invention of the undertaker, may be very highly assessed without any injustice being done to the labourer.
3. The compensation referred to in the text, viz. the compensation for difference of time between the wage payment and the realising of the final product, this being afforded by the customary interest.
4. The undertaker may possibly get an additional profit by taking advantage of the necessitous condition of the labourers to usuriously force down their wages.
Of these four constituents only the latter involves any violation of the principle that the labourer should receive the whole value of his product.
E.g., Soziale Frage, pp. 44, 107.
Soziale Frage, pp. 113, 147. Erklärung und Abhilfe, i. p. 123. In the latter Rodbertus says: "If the value of agricultural and manufacturing product is regulated by the labour incorporated in it, as always happens on the whole, even where commerce is free," etc.
Ibid. p. iii. n.
The above was written before the pu