Theories of Surplus Value, Marx 1861-3
[Chapter XI] Ricardo’s Theory of Rent.
[1. Historical Conditions for the Development of
the Theory of Rent by Anderson and Ricardo]
The main points were dealt with when discussing
Rodbertus. Just a few more gleanings here.
Firstly, some comments on the historical aspect:
Ricardo was first of all concerned with the period
1770-1815, which came approximately within his own
experience, and during which wheat prices were constantly
rising. Anderson [on the other hand] was concerned
with the eighteenth century, at the close of which he was
writing. During the first half of that century wheat
prices were falling and during the second half they were
rising. Hence for Anderson, the law he discovered was
in no way connected with a diminishing productivity of
agriculture or a normal <for Anderson an unnatural>
rise in the price of the product. For Ricardo however
such a connection existed. Anderson believed that the
abolition of the corn laws (at that time export premiums)
caused the rise in prices during the second half of the
eighteenth century. Ricardo knew that the introduction
of corn laws (1815) was intended to prevent the fall in
prices, and to a certain degree was bound to do so.
With regard to the latter [it was] therefore necessary to
point out that, if left to itself, the law of
rent—within a definite territory—was
bound to result in recourse to less fertile land, thus
leading to dearer agricultural products and increased rent
at the cost of industry and the mass of the
population. And here Ricardo was right, both
historically and in practice. Anderson on the other
hand [maintained] that corn laws (and he also favours a duty
on imports) must further the even development of agriculture
within a definite territory and that for this even
development agriculture needs security. Consequently
he [maintained] that this progressive development in
itself—through the law of rent he
discovered—would lead to increased productivity in
agriculture and thereby to a fall in the average prices of
agricultural produce.
Both of them, however, start out from the viewpoint
which, on the continent, seems so strange: 1.
That there is no Landed property to shackle any desired
investment of capital in land. 2. That expansion
takes place from better land to worse (this process is
absolute for Ricardo, provided one leaves out of account the
interruptions caused by the response of science and
industry; for Anderson the worse land is in turn transformed
into better land and so it is relative). 3. That
a sufficient amount of capital is always available for
investment in agriculture.
Now so far as 1. and 2. are concerned, it must seem very
odd to the continentals, that in the country in which,
according to their conception, feudal landed property has
maintained itself most stubbornly, the economists, Anderson
as well as Ricardo, start out from the conception that no
landed property exists. The explanation for this
is:
firstly: the peculiarity of the English “law
of enclosures”, which is in no way analogous with the
continental portioning out of common land;
secondly: nowhere in the world has capitalist
production, since Henry VII, dealt so ruthlessly with the
traditional relations of agriculture, adapting and
subordinating the conditions to its own requirements.
In this respect England is the most revolutionary country in
the world. Wherever the conditions handed down from
history were at variance with, or did not correspond to, the
requirements of capitalist production on the land, they were
ruthlessly swept away; this applies not only to the position
of the village communities but to the village communities
themselves, not only to the habitats of the agricultural
population but to the agricultural population itself, not
only to the original centres of cultivation, but to
cultivation itself. The German, for example, meets
with economic relations that are determined by traditional
circumstances such as land boundaries, the position of the
economic centres, given conglomerations of the
population. The Englishman meets with historical
conditions of agriculture which have been progressively
created by capital since the end of the 15th century.
“Clearing of estates”, a technical term
[well-known] in the United Kingdom, will not be found in any
continental country. But what is the meaning of this
“clearing of estates”? It means
that without any consideration for the local inhabitants,
who are driven away, for existing village communities, which
are obliterated, for agricultural buildings, which are torn
down, for the type of agriculture, which is transformed in
one fell swoop, for instance arable land converted into
grazing pasture—[in short] none of the conditions of
production are accepted as they have traditionally existed
but are historically transformed in such a way that
under the circumstances, they will provide the most
profitable investment for capital. To that extent,
therefore, no landed property exists; it gives
capital—i.e., the farmer—full scope, since it is
only concerned with monetary income. A Pomeranian
landowner, therefore, with his head full of ancestral land
boundaries, centres of economy and lectures on agriculture
etc., may well be amazed by Ricardo’s
“unhistorical” view of the ||561| development of conditions in
agriculture. This shows merely that he naïvely
confuses Pomeranian conditions with those prevailing in
England. But it cannot be said that Ricardo, who in
this case starts from the conditions in England, is just as
narrow-minded as the Pomeranian landowner, who can think
only in terms of Pomeranian conditions. English
conditions are the only ones in which modern
landownership, i.e., landownership which has been
modified by capitalist production, has been
adequately developed. For the modern—the
capitalist—mode of production, the English view is
here the classical view. The Pomeranian, on the other
hand, judges the developed relations from a historically
lower and as yet inadequate form.
Indeed, most of Ricardo’s continental critics even take
as their starting-point conditions in which the capitalist
mode of production, adequate or inadequate, does not as yet
exist at all. It is as if a guild-master wanted, lock,
stock and barrel, to apply Adam Smith’s laws—which
presuppose free competition—to his guild economy.
The presupposition of the movement from better to worse
land—relatively to the particular stage in the
development of the productive power of labour as with
Anderson, and not absolutely as with Ricardo—could
only arise in a country such as England, where within a
relatively very small territory capital has farmed so
ruthlessly and has for centuries mercilessly sought to adapt
to its own needs all traditional relationships of
agriculture. Thus it [the presupposition] could only
arise where, unlike the continent, capitalist production in
agriculture does not date from yesterday and does not have
to fight against old traditions.
A second factor influencing the English was the knowledge
they gained through their colonies. We have
seen that Adam Smith’s work—with direct reference to
the colonies—already contains the basis for the entire
Ricardian viewpoint. In these colonies, and especially
in those which produced only merchandise such as tobacco,
cotton, sugar etc. and not the usual foodstuffs, where,
right from the start, the colonists did not seek subsistence
but set up a business, fertility was of course decisive,
given the situation [of the land], and given the
fertility, the situation of the land was
decisive. They did not act like the Germans, who
settled in Germany in order to make their home there, but
like people who, driven by motives of bourgeois
production, wanted to produce commodities, and
their point of view was, from the outset, determined not by
the product but by the sale of the product. That
Ricardo and other English writers transferred this
point of view—which emanated from people who were
themselves already the product of the capitalist mode of
production—from the colonies to the course of world
history and that they took the capitalist mode of
production as a premise for agriculture in general, as
it was for their colonists, is due to the fact that
they saw in these colonies, only in more obvious form,
without the fight against traditional relations, and
therefore untarnished, the same domination of
capitalist production in agriculture as hits the eye
everywhere in their own country. Hence, if a German
professor or landowner—belonging to a country which
differs from all others in its complete lack of
colonies—considers such a view to be
“false”, then this is quite understandable.
Finally the presupposition of a continuous flow of
capital from one sphere of production into another, this
basic assumption of Ricardo’s amounts to nothing more
than the assumption that developed capitalist production
predominates. Where this domination is not yet
established, this presupposition does not exist. For
instance, a Pomeranian landowner will find it strange that
neither Ricardo nor indeed any English writer ever suspects
that agriculture might lack capital. The
Englishman does, indeed, complain of lack of land in
proportion to capital, but never of a lack of capital
in proportion to the land. Wakefield, Chalmers,
etc. try to explain the fall in the rate of profit from the
former circumstance. The latter does not exist for any
English writer; Corbet notes as a self-explanatory fact,
that capital is always redundant in all branches of
production. On the other hand, bearing in mind the
situation in Germany, the landowner’s difficulties in
borrowing money—because mostly it is the landowner
himself who cultivates the land and not a capitalist class
which is quite independent of him—it is understandable
that Herr Rodbertus, for example, is surprised at “the
Ricardian fiction, that the supply of capital is
regulated by the desire to invest it”.
([Sociale Briefe an v. Kirchmann. Dritter Brief,
Berlin, 1851] p. 211.) What the Englishman lacks is a
“field of action”, opportunity for investment of
the available stock of capital. But a “desire
for capital” to “invest”, on the part of
the only class which has capital to invest—the
capitalist class—this does not exist in England.
||562| This “desire
for capital” is Pomeranian.
The objection made by English writers against Ricardo was
not that capital was not available in any desired quantity
for particular investments, but that the return flow of
capital from agriculture encountered specific technical
etc. obstacles.
This kind of critical-continental censoriousness of
Ricardo, therefore, only shows the lower stage in the
conditions of production from which these
“sages” start out.
[2. The Connection Between Ricardo’s Theory of Rent
and His Explanation of Cost-Prices]
Now to the matter in hand.
In the first place, in order to isolate the problem, we
must leave aside entirely differential rent, which
alone exists for Ricardo. By differential
rent I understand the difference in the magnitude
of rent—the greater or smaller rent which is due to
the different fertility of the various types of
land. (Given equal fertility, differential rent
can only arise from differences in the amounts of capital
invested. This case does not exist for our problem and
does not affect it.) This differential rent merely
corresponds to the excess profits which, given the
market-price or, more correctly, the
market-value, will be made in every branch of
industry, for example cotton spinning, by that
capitalist whose conditions of production are better
than the average conditions of this particular trade.
For the value of the commodity of a particular sphere
of production is determined, not by the quantity of
labour which the individual commodity costs, but by the
quantity which the commodity costs that is produced
under the average conditions of the sphere.
Manufacture and agriculture only differ from one another
here in that in the one, the excess profits fall into the
pocket of the capitalist himself, whereas in the other they
are pocketed by the landowner, and furthermore, that in the
former they are f l u i d, they are not lasting, are
made by this capitalist or that, and always disappear again,
while in the latter they become fixed because of
their enduring (at least for a long period) natural basis in
the variations in the land.
This differential rent must therefore be left out of
account, but it should be noted that it may exist not only
when a movement from better to inferior land takes place but
also from inferior to better land. In both cases the
only requirement is that the newly cultivated land is
necessary but at the same time only just sufficient to
satisfy the additional demand. If the newly
cultivated, better land were more than sufficient to
satisfy the additional demand then, according to the volume
of the additional demand, part or all of the inferior land
would be thrown out of cultivation or, at any rate,
out of cultivation of that product which forms the
basis of the agricultural rent, i.e., in England of wheat
and in India of rice. Thus differential rent does not
presuppose a progressive deterioration of
agriculture, but can equally well spring from a
progressive improvement in it. Even where it is
based on the descent to worse types of land, firstly this
descent may be due to an improvement in the
productive forces of agriculture, in that the cultivation of
the worse land, at the price which is set by demand,
is only made possible by greater productive
power. Secondly, the worse land can be
improved; the differences will nevertheless remain, although
they will become smaller, so that as a result there is only
a relative, comparative decrease in
productivity— whereas absolute productivity
increases. This was in fact the presupposition
made by Anderson, the original author of the Ricardian
law.
Then, in the second instance, only the agricultural
rent in the strict sense should be considered here, in
other words the rent of the land which supplies the chief
vegetable foods. Smith has already explained that the
rents of land which supplies the other products, such as
stock-raising etc., are determined by that rent; that
they are themselves derived, determined by the law of
rent and not determining it. In themselves therefore
these rents do not furnish any useful material for the
understanding of the law of rent in its original, pure
condition: There is nothing primary about them.
This settled, the question is reduced to the following:
Does an absolute rent exist? That is, a rent
which arises from the fact that capital is invested in
agriculture rather than manufacture; a rent which is quite
independent of differential rent or excess
profits which are yielded by capital invested in better
land?
It is clear that Ricardo correctly answers this question
in the negative, since he starts from the
false assumption that values and average
prices of commodities are identical, If this were the
case, it would be a tautology to say that the price of
agricultural products is above their
cost-price—when ||563| the constant price of
agricultural products yields, beyond the average profits,
also an extra rent, a constant surplus over and above
the average profit—for this cost-price equals the
advances plus the average profit and nothing else.
Were the prices of agricultural products to stand
above their cost-prices, and always to yield an
excess profit, they would consequently stand above
their value. There would be no alternative but to
assume that agricultural products are perpetually sold
above their value, which, however, equally
presupposes that all other products are sold below
their value, or that value in general is something quite
different from that which the theory requires it to
be. Taking into account all compensations which take
place between the different capitals owing to differences
arising from the process of circulation, the same
quantity of labour (immediate and accumulated) would
produce a higher value in agriculture than in
manufacture. The value of the commodity would
therefore not be determined by the quantity of labour
contained in it. The whole foundation of political
economy would thus be thrown overboard. Ergo, Ricardo
rightly concludes: no absolute rents. Only
differential rent is possible; in other words the value of
the agricultural product grown on the worst land equals the
cost-price of the product, as [with] every other
commodity, [this is equal to its] value. The capital
invested in the worst land differs from capital invested in
manufacture only by the type of investment, by its
being a particular species of investment. Here
therefore the universal validity of the law of value becomes
apparent. Differential rent—and this is
the sole rent on better land—is nothing but the excess
profit yielded by capitals employed in above-average
conditions owing to the [establishment of] one identical
market-value in every sphere of production.
This excess profit consolidates itself only in agriculture
because of its natural basis and, furthermore, the
excess profit flows not into the pocket of the capitalist
but into that of the landowner since it is the
landowner who represents this natural basis.
The entire argument collapses together with Ricardo’s
assumption, that cost-price equals
value. The theoretical interest which
forces him into a denial of absolute rent disappears.
If the value of the commodities differs from their
cost-price, then they necessarily fall into three
categories. In the first category, cost-price is equal
to the value of the commodity, in the second, the value is
below its cost-price and in the third it is
above its cost-price. The fact, therefore, that
the price of the agricultural product yields a rent,
only shows that the agricultural product belongs to that
group of commodities whose value is above their
cost-price. The only remaining problem requiring
solution would be: why, in contrast to other commodities
whose value is also above their cost-price,
competition between capitals does not reduce the value of
agricultural products to their cost-price. The
question already contains the answer. Because,
according to the presupposition, this can only happen in so
far as the competition between capitals is able to effect
such an equalisation, and this in turn can only occur to the
extent that all the conditions of production are either
directly created by capital or are
equally—elementally—at its disposal as if it had
created them. With land this is not the case, because
landed property exists and capitalist production
starts its career on the presupposition of landed
property, which is not its own creation, but which was
already there before it. The mere existence of
landed property thus answers the question. All that
capital can do is to subject agriculture to the conditions
of capitalist production. But it cannot deprive
landed property of its hold on that part of the
agricultural product which capital could
appropriate—not through its own action—but
only on the assumption of the non-existence of
landed property. Since landed property exists,
capital must however leave the excess of value over
cost-price to the landowner. But this difference
[between value and cost-price] itself only arises from a
difference in the composition of the organic
component parts of capital. All commodities whose
value, in accordance with this organic composition, is
above the cost-price, thereby show that the labour
expended on them is relatively less productive than
that expended on the commodities whose value is equal to the
cost-price and even less productive than that expended on
the commodities whose value is below the cost-price;
for they require a greater quantity of immediate
labour in proportion to the past labour contained in
the constant capital; they require more labour in order to
set in motion a definite capital. This is a
historical difference and can therefore
disappear. The same chain of reasoning which
demonstrates the possibility of the existence of absolute
rent, shows its reality, its existence, as a purely
historical fact, which belongs to a certain stage of
development of agriculture and which may disappear at a
higher stage.
Ricardo explained differential rent from an absolute
decrease in productivity in agriculture.
Differential rent does not presuppose this, nor does
Anderson make this assumption. On the other hand
Ricardo denies the existence of absolute rent because he
||564| assumes the organic composition of
capital to be the same in industry and agriculture and
so denies the purely historical fact of the lower
development of the productive power of labour in
agriculture as compared with manufacture. Hence lie
falls into a twofold historical error: On the one hand, he
assumes that the productivity of labour in agriculture is
absolutely the same as in industry, thus denying a
purely historical difference in their actual stage of
development. On the other hand, he assumes an
absolute decrease in the productivity of agriculture
and regards this as its law of development. He does
the one in order to make cost-price on the worst land
equal value and he does the other in order to explain
the differences between the cost-prices [of the
products] of the better kinds of land and their
values. The whole blunder originates in the
confusion of cost-price with value.
Thus the Ricardian theory is disposed of. The rest
was dealt with earlier, in the chapter on Rodbertus.
[3. The Inadequacy of the Ricardian Definition of
Rent]
I have already indicated that Ricardo opens the chapter
by stating that it is necessary to examine “whether
the appropriation of land, and the consequent
creation of rent” ([David Ricardo, On the
Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation, third
edition, London, 1821], p. 53) do not interfere with the
determination of value by labour-time. And he says
later:
“Adam Smith… cannot be correct
in supposing that the original rule which regulated the
exchangeable value of commodities, namely, the
comparative quantity of labour by which they were produced,
can be at all altered by the appropriation of land and
the payment of rent” (l.c., p. 67).
This direct and conscious connection which Ricardo’s
theory of rent has with the determination of value is
its theoretical merit. Apart from that this Chapter
II “On Rent” is rather inferior to West’s
exposition. It contains much that is queer, petitio
principii and unfair dealing with the problem.
Actual agricultural rent, which Ricardo
justifiably here treats as rent proper, is that which is
paid for the permission to invest capital, to produce
capitalistically, in the element land. Here
land is the element of production. This does
not apply, for example, to rent for buildings, waterfalls
etc. The powers of nature which are paid for in these
cases enter into production as a condition, be it as
productive power or as sine qua non, but they are not
the element in which this particular branch of
production is carried on. Again, in rents for mines,
coal-mines etc., the earth is the reservoir, from whose
bowels the use-values are to be torn. In this case
payment is made for the land, not because it is the
element in which production is to take place, as in
agriculture, not because it enters into production as
one of the conditions of production, as in the case of the
waterfall or the building site, but because it is a
reservoir containing the use-values, which are to be
got hold of through industry.
Ricardo’s explanation that:
“Rent is that portion of the
produce of the earth, which is paid to the landlord for
the use of the original and indestructible
powers of the soil” (l.c., p. 53)
is poor. Firstly, the soil has no
“indestructible powers”. (A note on this
is to follow at the end of this chapter.) Secondly, it
has no “original” powers either, since the land
is in no way “original”, but rather the product
of an historical and natural process. But let that
pass. By “original” powers of the land we
understand here those, which it possesses independently of
the action of human industry, although, on the other hand,
the powers given to it by human industry, become just as
much its original powers as those given to it by the process
of nature. Apart from this, it is correct to say that
rent is a payment for the “use” of
natural things, irrespective of whether it is for the use of
the “original powers” of the soil or of the
power of the waterfall or of land for building or of the
treasures to be found in the water or in the bowels of the
earth.
As distinct from the agricultural rent proper,
Adam Smith (says Ricardo) speaks of the rent paid for wood
from virgin forests, rent of coal-mines and
stone-quarries. The way in which Ricardo disposes of
this is rather strange.
He begins by saying that the rent of land must not be
confused with the interest and profit of capital (l.c.,
p. 53), that is:
“capital […] employed in
ameliorating the quality of the land, and in erecting such
buildings as were necessary to secure and preserve the
produce” (l.c., p. 54).
From this he immediately [passes on] to the
above-mentioned examples from Adam Smith. With regard
to virgin forests:
“Is it not, however, evident, that
the person who paid what he” (Adam Smith) “calls
rent, paid it in consideration of the valuable
commodity which was then standing on the land, and that
he actually repaid himself with a profit, by the sale of
the timber?” (l.c., p. 54).
Similarly with the stone-quarries and coal-mines.
“… the compensation ||565| […] for the mine or
quarry, is paid for the value of the coal or stone
which can be removed from them, and has no connection with
the original and indestructible powers of the land.
This is a distinction of great importance, in an enquiry
concerning rent and profits; for it is found, that the laws
which regulate the progress of rent, are widely different
from those which regulate the progress of profits, and
seldom operate in the same direction” (l.c.,
pp. 54-55).
This is very strange logic. One must distinguish
rent paid to the owner of the land for the use
of the “original and indestructible powers of the
soil” from the interest and profit which is
paid to him for the capital he has invested in
ameliorating the land, etc. The
“compensation” which is paid to the owner
of naturally-grown forests for the right to
“remove” wood, or to the owner of stone-quarries
and coal-mines for the right to remove stones and coal, is
not rent, because it is not a payment for the
“use of the original and indestructible powers of the
soil”. Very well. But Ricardo argues as
though this “compensation” were the same as the
profit and interest which are paid for capital invested in
ameliorations of the land. But this is wrong.
Has the owner of a “virgin forest” invested
“capital” in it so that it may bear
“wood” or has the owner of stone-quarries and
coal-mines invested “capital” in these, so that
they may contain “stones” and
“coal”? Whence, therefore, his
“compensation”? It is by no means—as
Ricardo tries to make out—profit or interest of
capital. Therefore it is “rent” and
nothing else, even if it is not rent as defined by
Ricardo. But this only shows that his definition of
rent excludes those forms of it where the
“compensation” is paid for mere natural
things, in which no human labour is embodied, and where
it is paid to the owner of these natural things only
because he is the “owner”, the owner of
land, whether this consists of soil, forest, fish pond,
waterfall, building land or anything else. But, says
Ricardo, the man who paid for the right to fell trees
in the forest, paid “in consideration of the
valuable commodity which was then standing on the
land and […] actually repaid himself
with a profit, by the sale of the timber”
[p. 54]. Stop! When Ricardo here calls the wood,
i.e., the trees “standing on the land” in
the virgin forest a “valuable commodity”,
then this means only that it is potentially a
use-value. And this use-value is expressed here
in the word “valuable”. But it is not a
“commodity”. Because for this it
would, at the same time, have to be exchange-value, in other
words, to contain a certain quantity of labour expended upon
it. It only becomes a commodity by being separated
from the virgin forest, by being felled, removed and
transported—by being transformed from wood into
timber. Or does it only become a commodity by the fact
it is sold? Then arable land too becomes a commodity
by the mere act of selling?
Then we would have to say: Rent is the price paid to
the owner of natural forces or mere products of nature
for the right of using those forces or appropriating (by
labour) those products. This is in fact the form in
which all rent appears originally. But then the
question remains to be solved, how things which have no
value can have a price and how this is
compatible with the general theory of value.
The question: for what purpose does the man pay
“a compensation” for the right to remove timber
from the land upon which it stands, has nothing to do with
the real question. The question is: from what
fund does he pay? Well, says Ricardo,
“by the sale of the timber”. That
is, out of the price of the timber. And
furthermore, this price was such that, as Ricardo says, the
man “actually repaid himself with a
profit”. Now we know where we are. The
price of the timber must at any rate equal the sum of money
representing the quantity of labour necessary to fell the
timber, to remove it, to transport it, to bring it to
market. Now is the profit with which the man
“repays” himself, an addition over and above
this value, this exchange-value just imparted to the
wood through the labour expended upon it? If Ricardo
said this then he would fall into the crudest conception,
far beneath his own doctrine. No. Given that the
man was a capitalist, the profit is part of the labour he
employed in the production of the “timber”, the
part for which he did not pay; and the man would have
made the same profit, if he had set in motion the same
amount of labour, shall we say, in cotton spinning.
(If the man is not a capitalist, then the profit is equal to
that quantity of his labour which he exerts beyond that
which is necessary to cover his wages, and which would have
constituted the profit of the capitalist, had a capitalist
employed him, but which now constitutes his own profit
because he is his own wage-labourer and his own capitalist
in one and the same person.) But here we come
to the ugly word that this timber man “actually
repaid himself with a profit”. This gives
the whole transaction a very ordinary look and corresponds
to the crude manner of thinking which this capitalist, who
removes timber, may himself have of the source of his
profit. First he pays the owner of the virgin forest
for the use-value wood, which, however, has no
“value” (value in exchange) and which, so long
as it “stands upon the land” has not even a
use-value. He may pay him £ 5 per ton. And
then he sells the same wood to the public (setting aside his
other costs) at £ 6 and so actually pays back to himself
the £5 with a profit of 20 per cent. [He]
“actually repaid himself with a profit”.
If the owner of the forest had only demanded
“compensation” of £ 2 (40 s.), then the
timber man would have sold the ton at £2 8s. instead of
at [£] 6. ||566| Since
he always adds the same rate of profit, the price of timber
would be high or low here because the rent is high or
low. The latter would enter into the price as a
constituent part but would in no way be the result of the
price. Whether the
“rent”—compensation—is paid to the
owner of the land for the use of the “power” of
the land or for the “use” of the “natural
products” of the land, in no way alters the economic
relations, in no way alters the fact that money is paid for
“a natural thing” (power or produce of the
earth) upon which no previous human labour has been
spent. And thus on the second page of his chapter
“On Rent” Ricardo would have overthrown
his whole theory in order to avoid a difficulty. It
would appear that Adam Smith was a great deal more
far-sighted here.
The same case with the stone-quarries and coal-mines.
“The compensation given for
the mine or quarry, is paid for the value of the coal
or stone which can be removed from them, and has no
connection with the original and indestructible
powers of the land”[a] (l.c., pp. 54-55).
No! But there is a very significant connection with
the “original and destructible
productions of the soil”. The word
“value” is just as ugly here as the
phrase “repaid himself with a profit” was
above.
Ricardo never uses the word value for utility or
usefulness or “value in use”. Does he
therefore mean to say that the “compensation” is
paid to the owner of the quarries and coal-mines for the
“value” the coal and stone have before
they are removed from the quarry and the mine—in their
original state? Then he invalidates his entire
doctrine of value. Or does value mean here, as
it must do, the possible use-value and hence also the
prospective exchange-value of coal and stone?
Then it means nothing but that their owner is paid
rent for the permission to use the “original
composition of the soil” for the production of coal
and stones. And it is absolutely incomprehensible why
this should not be called “rent”, in the same
way as if the permission were given to use the
“powers” of the land for the production of
wheat. Or we end up again with the annulment of the
whole theory of rent, as explained in connection with
wood. According to the correct theory, there are no
difficulties involved here at all. The labour, or
capital, employed in the “production” <not
reproduction> of wood, coal or stone (this labour, it is
true, does not create these natural products, but separates
them from their elementary connection with the earth and so
“produces” them as usable wood, coal or stone)
evidently belongs to those spheres of production in which
the part of capital laid out in wages is greater than that
laid out in constant capital, [where consequently the amount
of] direct labour is greater than that of “past”
labour the result of which serves as a means of
production. If, therefore, the commodity is sold at
its value here, then this value will be above its
cost-price, i.e., the wear and tear of the
instruments of labour, the wages, and the average
profit. The excess can thus be paid as rent to
the owner of forest, quarry or coal-mine.
But why these clumsy manoeuvres of Ricardo’s, such as the
wrong use of value etc.? Why this clinging to the
explanation of rent as a payment for the use of the
“original and indestructible powers of the
land”? Perhaps the answer will emerge
later. In any case, he wants to distinguish, to
mention specifically, the agricultural rent in the strict
sense and at the same time to open the way for differential
rent, by saying that payment for this elementary power can
only be made in so far as it develops different degrees of
power.
[a] In the
manuscript: “soil”.—Ed.