Here, Duhring fails to distinguish between the capitalist farmer and the peasant farmer. The peasant farmer must utilise the land for their own subsistence. They must pay whatever rent is required by the landlord to do so. However, even here, as Marx set out in Capital, this is not just an arbitrary amount. The origin of this rent arises as tribute, and its material basis is the surplus product/labour of the peasant. But, the position of the capitalist farmer is quite different. As with any capitalist, they do not have to apply their capital to the land. Incidentally, this is why capitalist production had to first arise in the towns rather than agriculture. It is the urban capitalist production which not only establishes an average industrial rate of profit, and so the basis of surplus profit/rent, but also means that capital does not have to be employed on the land if that average profit can't be made.
They could apply it to textile production, or any other sphere, where the highest rate of profit can be obtained. So, the capitalist farmer does not start from the position of having to pay a given amount of rent, and so taking what is left as their income. Rather, the position is reversed. Capital is only employed on the land if the rate of profit obtained is greater than the average industrial rate of profit. So, even if the farmer obtained the average rate of profit, but had to pay rent, they would end up with less than the average rate of profit. They would invest that capital elsewhere. It is only the profit of capital invested on the land that is greater than the average industrial rate of profit that can form rent.
So, Duhring is quite wrong in saying, in relation to capitalist production, as against feudal production, or the position of the peasant farmer, that “it is not customary to regard tenants' earnings as the main income and ground-rent as a balance.” For capitalist production, that is precisely what the relation is.
Duhring says,
“... in the theory of ground-rent the case in which the land is worked by the owner is not separately treated, and no special emphasis is laid on the difference between the amount of rent in the case of a lease and where the owner produces the rent himself. At any rate no one has found it necessary to conceive the rent resulting from owner-cultivated land as divided in such a way that one portion represents as it were the interest on the landed property and the other the surplus earnings of enterprise.” (p 286)
No one in Prussia maybe, but the distinction between these different revenues had been made in English Political Economy, at least from the time of Adam Smith. It forms the basis of Ricardo's theory of rent, and was even more explicitly set out by Marx.
Duhring, again basing himself on Prussian agriculture, as with Rodbertus, reduces the capitalist farmer to the position of being merely a professional manager employed by the landlord, and so reduces the profit to “a form of wages”. He says,
“Apart from the tenant’s own capital which he brings into the business, it would seem that his specific earnings are mostly regarded as a kind of wages. It is however hazardous to assert anything on this subject, as the question has never been raised with this precision.” (p 286)
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