 not worth more than £10? Does the owner know beforehand whether the product will ever be worth £20? Is it not possible that he might be forced, contrary to his original intention, to use or to sell the wine before the expiry of twelve years? And would he not then have paid £20 for a product that was never worth more than £10 or perhaps £12? And then, how is he to pay the labourers who produce that other new wine which he sells at once for £10? Is he to pay them also £20? Then he will be ruined. Or only £10? Then different labourers will receive different wages for precisely similar work, which again is unjust; not to mention the fact that a man cannot very well know beforehand whose product it is that will be sold at once, and whose stored up for a dozen years.
But still further. Even a £20 wage for a cask of new wine would not be enough to protect the vine-grower from the accusation of robbery; for he might let the wine lie in the cellar twenty-four years instead of twelve, and then it would be worth not £20 but £40. Is he then, justly speaking, bound to pay the labourers who, twenty-four years before that, have produced the wine, £40 instead of £10? The idea is too absurd. But if he pays them only £10 or £20, then he makes a profit on capital, and Rodbertus declares that he has curtailed the labourer's just wage by keeping back a part of the value of his product!
I scarcely think any one will venture to maintain that the cases of interest which have been brought forward, and the numerous cases analogous to them, are explained by Rodbertus's theory. But a theory which has failed to explain any important part of the phenomena to be explained cannot be the true one, and so this final examination brings us to the same result as the detailed criticism which preceded it might lead us to expect. Rodbertus's Exploitation theory is, in its foundation and in its conclusions, wrong; it is in contradiction with itself and with the circumstances of actual life.
The nature of my critical task is such that, in the foregoing 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. E