“If, as a result of the employment of machinery etc., agricultural labour becomes more productive, the higher the price of this machinery etc., the smaller will be the increase in productivity. It is the use-value of the machinery and not its value which increases the productivity of agricultural labour or of any other sort of labour. Otherwise one might also say that the productivity of industrial labour is, in the first place, due to the presence of raw material and its properties. But again it is the use-value of the raw material, not its value, which constitutes a condition of production for industry. Its value, on the contrary, is a drawback.” (p 81)
Consequently, Rodbertus' argument that the basis of rent was the fact that agriculture did not bear the cost of the replacement of constant capital, whilst manufacture did, does not stand up, because the same could be said in reverse about the cost of machinery and other means of production produced by manufacture and used by agriculture.
If we consider the machines agriculture uses, they comprise two elements. Firstly, there are the raw materials. Again, these raw materials, like wood, may be used directly by the machine maker, or they may be used by other manufacturers to produce components such as steel, belting and so on, used by the machine maker. Secondly, there is the manufacturing labour, which processes these raw materials, and either directly produces the machines, or else produces the components of the machine.
If we consider the raw materials used in the production of the machine, then they are like the seed produced by the farmer. That is they cannot be consumed by him. They form no part of his revenue, because they must be used solely to replace his constant capital. If the farmer consumed all of his output he would have no seed to undertake production next year. But, similarly, if he consumed all his output, he would be unable to reproduce the machines consumed in production.
The value of the ploughs and other tools and equipment is passed into the value of his output, as wear and tear, but he cannot retain this portion of the value of his output, precisely because he must again hand that value on to the machine maker so as to reproduce the tools and machines.
The farmer, therefore, takes a portion of his output and passes it to the manufacturer, who changes its form into the machine, and hands it back to him. But, in addition to this value of the raw material, that the farmer passes to the manufacturer, and then receives back in the machine, the machine also contains the value of the manufacturing labour.
The portion of the machine value equal to the value of the raw material, can then be viewed as being agricultural labour that simply comes back. But, that is not the case with the part of the value of the machine that is attributable only to the manufacturing labour. That is then a manufacturing cost that enters into agricultural costs of production in the same way that raw material cost enters into manufacturing.
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