““Ricardo limits ground-rent to that which the landowner is paid for the use of the original, natural and indestructible qualities of the land. He thus wants to ensure that everything which would have to be ascribed to capital in the land which is already being cultivated is deducted from rent. But it is clear that out of the yield from a piece of land he must never allot more to capital than the full interest customary in a country. For otherwise he would have to assume that there are two different rates of gain in the economic development of a country one agricultural, which is greater than that prevailing in manufacture, and this latter. This assumption would overthrow his very system, which is based on the equality of the rate of gain” (l.c., pp. 215-16)” (p 157 – 8)
Marx points out that this is written from the perspective of the landowner who borrows money capital to make improvements to the land, and must pay interest on that money capital. But, under capitalism, it is not the landlord who makes improvements to the land, but the capitalist farmer. The concern of the farmer is not with making a sufficient return so as to cover the average interest, but in order to make the average profit. In fact, Marx says, Ricardo knew what Anderson knew, but what Rodbertus doesn't, which is that the productivity of the soil attributable to such capital investment, over time, becomes part and parcel of the natural fertility of the soil, and thereby raises the rent. Marx gives a number of citations from his The Poverty of Philosophy which explain the nature of modern landed property.
““Rent, in the Ricardian sense, is property in land in its bourgeois state; that is, feudal property which has become subject to the conditions of bourgeois production.” (Misère de la Philosophie, Paris, 1847 p. 156.)” (p 158)
““Ricardo, after postulating bourgeois production as necessary for determining rent, applies the conception of rent, nevertheless, to the landed properly of all ages and all countries. This is an error common to all the economists who represent the bourgeois relations of production as eternal categories” (l.c., p. 160)” (p 158)
““Land as capital can be increased just as much as all the other instruments of production. Nothing is added to its matter, to use M. Proudhon’s language, but the lands which serve as instruments of production are multiplied. The very fact of applying further outlays of capital to land already transformed into means of production increases land as capital without adding anything to land as matter, that is, to the extent of he land” (l.c., p. 165)” (p 158)
““In the first place, one cannot, as in manufacturing industry, multiply at will the instruments of production possessing the same degree at productivity, that is, plots of land with the same degree of fertility. Them as population increases, land of an inferior quality begins to be exploited, or mew outlays of capital, proportionately less productive than before, are made upon the same plot of land” (l.c., p. 157)” (p 159)
Rodbertus says,
““You would have to prove that the working population engaged in agriculture had, in the course of time, increased to a greater degree than the production of food or even just compared with the rest of the population of a country. Only this could irrefutably show that increasing agricultural production also demands that progressively more labour is expended upon it. But it is just here that statistics contradict you” (l.c., p. 274). “Indeed, you will find that, [pretty well] as a rule, the denser the population of a country, the smaller will be the proportion of people engaged in agriculture… The same phenomenon can be observed when the population of a country increases: that section which is not engaged in agriculture will almost everywhere increase to a greater degree” (l.c., p. 275).” (p 159)
In fact, he says, the denser the population the smaller the proportion employed in agriculture, and as population increases, the non-agricultural population increases faster. There are a number of reasons for this, Marx explains. Firstly, agricultural labour becomes more productive as capitalist agriculture takes place on an expanding scale, and some land is turned over to cattle and sheep farming. But also, part of the non-agricultural population takes part in agriculture indirectly, because it produces the increasing quantity of fixed constant capital used in agriculture, which itself is a cause of the rising agricultural productivity.
Rodbertus again puts forward the mistaken concept that only what is being bought as productive capital constitutes an outlay of capital, and cost of production. He writes,
““At present the agriculturist” (in Pomerania) “does not” (regard) the feeding-stuffs for his draught animals as capital, if he has grown these in his own establishment…”
“Capital in itself, or from an economic point of view, is a product which continues to be used for production… But in respect of a particular gain which it is to yield, or from the point of view of to-day’s entrepreneurs, it must appear as an ‘outlay’ in order to be capital” (l.c., p. 77).” (p 159)
But, of course, such a cost of production or capital outlay does not at all have to be bought as Rodbertus thinks. It can simply be replaced in kind directly from production. What is replaced by such direct means forms no part of revenue for anyone, but it is no less a commodity than with the same product bought and sold.
“If instead of being sold as a commodity, a part of the product re-enters production, it does so as a commodity. It has previously been estimated as “money”, this is easily done, since simultaneously all these “outlays’, in agriculture too, are available on the market as “commodities”: cattle, feeding-stuffs, fertilisers, corn for sowing, seeds of all kinds.” (p 160)
Back To Part 15
Forward To Chapter 10
Back To Part 15
Forward To Chapter 10
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