Theories of Surplus Value, Marx 1861-3
Addenda
[1. Early Formulation of the Thesis That the Supply
of Agricultural Products Always Corresponds to Demand.
Rodbertus and the Practicians among the Economists of the
Eighteenth Century]
||XII-580b| The proposition
that corn produces its own demand etc.[a] “casually” advanced by
Adam Smith, later repeated by Malthus with
considerable pomposity in his theory of rent and partly used
as the basis of his theory of population, is very
concisely expressed in the following passage:
“Corn […] is scarce or
not scarce in proportion to the consumption of it. If
there are more m o u t h s, there will be more
corn, because there will be more hands to till
the earth; and if there is more corn, there will be
more mouths, because plenty will bring
people…“ ([John Arbuthnot], An
Inquiry into the Connection Between the Present Price of
Provisions, and the Size of Farms, etc. By a
Farmer, London, 1773, p. 125).
Hence
“the culture of the earth cannot be
over-done” (l.c., p. 62).
Rodbertus’s fantasy that seeds etc. do not enter
as an item of capital (into the farmer’s calculations],[b] is refuted by the
hundreds of treatises, some written by farmers themselves,
that appeared in the eighteenth century (particularly since
the 60s of that century). But on the contrary, it
would be correct to say that rent is an item of
expenditure for the farmer. He[c] reckons rent among the costs of
production (and it does belong to his costs of
production).
“If … the price of corn
is nearly what it ought to be, which can only be determined
by the proportion that the value of land bears to the
value of money” (l.c., p. 132).
As soon as capital takes possession of agriculture, the
farming-capitalist himself regards rent only as a deduction
from profit and the whole of surplus-value is for him
essentially profit:
“The old method of calculating the
profits of the farmer [was] by the three
rents” (the métayage system). “In
the infancy of agriculture, it was a conscientious and
equal partition of property; such as is now practised in the
less enlightened parts of the world … the one finds
land and capital, the other knowledge and labour: but on a
well-cultivated and good soil, the rent is now the least
object: it is the sum which a man can sink in stock,
and in the annual expense of his labour, on which be
is to reckon the interest of his money, or income”
(l.c., p. 34). |XII-580b||
[2. Nathaniel Forster on the Hostility Between
Landowners and Traders]
||XIII-670a| “The
landed and trading interests are eternally
jarring, and jealous of each other’s advantages”
([Nathaniel Forster], An Enquiry into the Causes of the
Present High Price of Provisions, London, 1767, p. 22,
note). |XIII-670a||
[3. Hopkins’s Views on the
Relationship Between Rent and Profit]
||XIII-669b| Hopkins
(passage to be looked up)[d] naively [describes] rent of
land as the original form of surplus-value, and profit
as derived from this.
He writes:
“When the…producers were both
agriculturists and manufacturers, the landowner received, as
rent of land, a value of £ 10. Suppose this
rent to have been paid one half in raw produce, and the
other half in manufactures;— on the division of
the producers into the two classes of agriculturists and
manufacturers” this could be continued.
“In practice, however, it would be found more
convenient for the cultivators of the land, to pay the
rent, and to charge it on their produce, when exchanging
it against the produce of the labour of the manufacturers;
so as to divide the payment into equitable proportions
between the two classes, and to leave wages and profits
equal in each department” (Thomas Hopkins,
Economical Enquiries relative to the Laws which Regulate
Rent, Profit, etc. London, 1822, p. 26). |XIII-669b||
[4. Carey, Malthus and James Deacon Hume on
Improvements in Agriculture]
||XI-490a|
“It will be observed that we consider the owner and
farmer always as one and the same
person… Such it is in the United
States.” (H. C. Carey, The Past, the Present, and
the Future, Philadelphia, 1848, p. 97, note).
“Man […] is always going from
a poor soil to better, and then returning on his footsteps
to the original poor one, and turning up the marl or the
lime; and so on, in continuous succession … and
[…] at each step in this course, he is making a
better machine[e]
… (l.c., pp. 128-29). “Capital may be
invested in agriculture with more advantage than in
engines, because the last are only of equal,
whereas the other is of superior, power” (l.c.,
p. 129). “The gain from a steam-engine[f]” (which
transforms the wool into cloth, etc.) “is the
wages of […] labour, minus the loss by
deterioration of the machine. Labour applied to
fashioning the earth produces wages, plus the gain by
improvement of the machine” (l.c., p. 129).
Hence “a piece of land that yields £ 100 per
annum will sell” dearer than a steam-engine which
produces just as much per annum (l.c., p. 130).
“The buyer of the first knows that it will pay his
wages and interest, plus the increase of its value by
use. The buyer of the other knows it will give him
wages and interest, minus the diminution in its value by use
[…] The one buys a machine that improves by
use. The other, one that deteriorates with use
[…] The one is a machine upon which new capital and
labour may be expended with constantly increasing return;
while upon the other no such expenditure can be made”
(l.c., p. 131).
***
Even those improvements in agriculture which bring about
reduced costs of production and eventually a fall in prices,
but which first—so long as prices have not yet
fallen—[call forth] a temporary rise of agricultural
profit, almost never fail,
to increase rent ultimately. The increased
capital, which is employed in consequence of the
opportunity of making great temporary profits, can seldom
or ever be entirely removed from the land, at the expiration
of the current leases; and, on the renewal of these
leases, the landlord feels the benefit of it in the
increase of his rents” (Thomas Robert Malthus,
An Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent,
London, 1815, p. 26).
***
“If until the prevalence of the late
high prices, arable land in general bore but little
rent, chiefly by reason of the acknowledged necessity
of frequent fallows; the rents must be again reduced, to
admit of a return to the same system” (James Deacon
Hume, Thoughts on the Corn-Laws, London, 1815,
p. 72). |XI-490a||
[5. Hodgskin and Anderson on the Growth of
Productivity in Agricultural Labour]
||XIII-670a| “A
diminishing surface suffices to supply man with food as
population multiplies” ([Thomas] Hodgskin
(anonymously), The Natural and Artificial Right of
Property Contrasted…, London, 1832, p. 69).
Similar ideas were expressed by Anderson even
earlier.[g] |XIII-670a||
[6. Decrease in the Rate of Profit]
||XIII-670a| Calculated on
the total capital the [rate of] profit of the larger
capital, which employs more constant capital (machinery, raw
material) and relatively less living labour, will be lower
than that of the smaller [amount of] profit yielded by the
smaller capital employing more living labour in proportion
to the total capital. The [relative] decrease in
variable capital and the relative increase in constant
capital, although both parts are growing, is only another
expression for the increased productivity of
labour. |XIII-670a||
[a] See this volume,
p. 354 et seqq.—Ed.
[b] See this volume,
pp. 45-55.—Ed.
[c] Arbuthnot, the
author of the anonymous pamphlet.—Ed.
[d] See this
volume, p. 55 and Note 20.—Ed.
[e] The reference is
to the land which has been worked and
improved.—Ed.
[f] Carey wrote:
“from its use”.—Ed.
[g] See this volume,
pp. 144-45.—Ed.