So now, to return to Engels' exposition.
“The first premise of the Tableau is that the farming system and with it large-scale agriculture as understood in Quesnay’s time, had been generally introduced, Normandy, Picardy, Île-de-France and a few other French provinces serving as prototypes. The farmer therefore appears as the real leader in agriculture, representing the whole productive (agricultural) class in the Tableau and paying the landlord a rent in money.” (p 314)
In other words, we have capitalist production, in agriculture. The social function of the landlord, in organising agricultural production, has ceased, and the landlords, now, simply receive capitalist ground-rent from the farmer, in the same way that, today, the social function of the private capitalist has ended, and the ruling-class of shareholders (owners of fictitious-capital) simply receive their revenues in the form of interest/dividends.
“An invested capital or inventory of ten milliard livres is assigned to the farmers as a whole; of this sum, one-fifth, or two milliards, is the working capital which has to be replaced every year—this figure too was estimated on the basis of the best-managed farms in the above provinces.” (p 314-5)
The “working-capital” is what Marx refers to, elsewhere, as circulating-capital. It is what is required for wages (variable-capital), raw materials, auxiliary materials (circulating constant capital) , and to cover the wear and tear of fixed capital. Because the physiocrats lump together the capitalist farmer with the agricultural labourers – as the productive class – they make no distinction between wages and profit in agriculture.
“Further premises: (1) that for the sake of simplicity constant prices and simple reproduction prevail; (2) that all circulation which takes place solely within one class is excluded, and that only circulation between class and class is taken into account; (3) that all purchases and sales taking place between class and class in the course of the industrial year are combined in a single total sum. Lastly, it must be borne in mind that in Quesnay’s time the home industry of the peasant family itself provided by far the greater portion of its needs other than food in France, as more or less in all Europe, and that it is therefore taken for granted here as accessory to agriculture.” (p 315)
The premise of constant prices simply removes the distraction of changes in productivity, which might lead to the previously discussed issues of tie-up or release of capital. It also removes the distraction of inflation, i.e. changes in the standard of prices. The premise of exchanges only between classes is, also, a simplifying assumption, were it not for the fact that the Physiocrats lump together the capitalists and labourers into the “productive” and “sterile” classes. In doing so, they fail to recognise the actual basis of the creation of surplus-value, in both these “classes”, as the surplus labour performed, and its appropriation by the capitalists.
The assumption of a single annual exchange between the classes is a simplifying assumption, and, in Marx's analysis in Capital and Theories of Surplus Value, he sets out the effects of breaking this down into multiple exchanges, during the year, on the circulation of money and capital. Marx' and Engels' analysis of the rate of turnover of capital is an extension of that.
The description of cottage industry as accessory to agriculture, indicates the extent to which industrial production of commodities was the preserve of the towns, and the “sterile class”, and provided means of production, and items of consumption, for the exploiting classes.
Its also notable, given the earlier discussion, that, in the Tableau, Quesnay's starting point is the total harvest, and is described as “total reproduction”, a phrase emphasised, here, also, by Engels. It is the basis of Marx's determination of value as “current reproduction cost”, and of his schemas of reproduction, in which what is reproduced is not money-values, but the physical elements of capital, i.e. the use-values.
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