trade. The characteristic mark of the interested merchants and manufacturers of that time, which is adequate to the period of capitalist development represented by them, is found in the fact that their principal aim in the transfor- mation of the feudal and agricultural societies into industrial ones and in the corresponding industrial struggle of the nations upon the world market is a hastened development of capital, which is not supposed to take place in the so-called natural way, but by means of forced measures. It makes a tremendous difference, whether the national capital is grad- ually and slowly transformed into industrial capital, or whether the time of this development is hastened by means of a tax which they impose through protective duties mainly upon the real estate owners, the middle class and small farmers, and the handicraftsmen, by the accelerated expropria- tion of the independent direct producers, by a violently hastened accumulation and concentration of capitals, in short ^12 Capitalist Production.
by a hastened introduction of tlie conditions of capitalist pro- duction. It makes at the same time an enormous difference in the capitalist and industrial exploitation of the natural powers of national production. Hence the national character of the mercantile system is not a mere phrase in the mouths of its spokesmen. Under the pretense of occupying them- selves merely with the wealth of the nation and the resources of the state, they practically proclaim the interests of the cap- italist class and the gathering of riches to be the ultimate end of the state, and so they proclaim bourgeois society against the old supernatural state. But at the same time they are conscious of the fact that the development of the interests of capital and of the capitalist class, of capitalist production, is the foundation of the national power and of the national pre- ponderance in modern society.
The physiocrats are, furthermore, correct in stating that the production of surplus-value, and with it all development of capital, has for its natural basis the productivity of agri- cultural labor. If human beings are not capable of produc- ing by one day's labor more means of subsistence, which signi- fies in its strictest sense more products of agriculture, than ev- ery laborer needs for his own reproduction, if the daily expen- diture of his entire labor-power suffices only to produce the means of subsistence indispensable for his own individual needs, then there can be no mention of any surplus product nor of any surplus-value. A productivity of agricultural labor exceeding the individual requirements of the laborer is the basis of all societies, and is above all the basis of capi- talist production, which separates a continually increasing portion of society from the production of the immediate re- quirements of life and transforms them into " free heads," as Steuart has it, making them available for exploitation in other spheres.
But what are we to say of more recent writers on eco- nomics, such as Daire, Passy, etc., who repeat the most prim- itive conceptions concerning the natural requirements of sur- plus labor and surplus-value in general, at a time when classic economy is in its declining years, or even on its deathbed, Genesis of Capitalist Ground-Rent. 913 and who imagine that they are thus saying something new and convincing on ground-rent, after this ground-rent has long developed a peculiar form and has become a specific part of surplus- value?
It is precisely characteristic of vulgar economy that it repeats things which were new, original, deep and justified during a certain outgrown stage of development, at a time when they have become platitudinous, stale, false. In this way it confesses that it has not the slightest suspicion of the problems which used to occupy the attention of classic econ- omy. It confounds them with questions that could be posed only on a low level in the development of bourgeois society. It is the same with its restless and self-complacent rumination of the physiocratic phrases concerning free trade. These phrases have long lost all theoretical interest, no mat- ter how much they may engage the practical attention of this or that modern state.
In natural economy, properly so-called, when no part of the agricultural product, or but a very insignificant part of it, enters into the process of circulation, or even but a relatively small portion of that part of the product which represents the revenue of the landlord, as it did in many Roman latifun- dia^, or upon the villae of CharlemagTie, or more or less during the entire Middle Ages (see Vincard, Histoire du Travail), the product and the surplus product of the large estates consists by no means purely of the products of agri- cultural labor. Domestic handicrafts and manufacturing labor, as side issues to agriculture, which forms the basis, is the prerequisite of that mode of production upon which nat- ural economy rests, in European antiquity and Middle Ages as well as in the Indian commune of the present day, in which the traditional organization has not yet been destroyed. The capitalist mode of production completely dissolves this connection. This process may be studied on a large scale during the last third of the 18th century, in England. Brains that had grown up in more or less semi-feudal societies, for instance Herrenschwand, still consider this sepa- ration of manufacture from agriculture as a foolhardy social 3F 914 Capitalist Production.
adventure, as an unthinkably risky mode of existence, even as late as the close of the 18th century. And even in tlie agricultural societies of antiquity, which show the greatest analogy to capitalist agriculture, namely Carthage and Rome, the similiarity with plantation management is greater than with that form which really corresponds to the capitalist mode of exploitation. ^^^ There existed at one time a formal analogy, which, how- ever, appears as a deception in all essential points to a man familiar with the capitalist mode of production, and who does not, like Mr. Mommsen,^^'^ discover a capitalist mode of pro- duction in every monetary economy. This formal analogy did not exist at all in continental Italy during antiquity, but at best only in Sicily, because this island served as an agri- cultural tributary for Rome, so that its agriculture was chiefly aimed at export. It was there that tenants of the modern kind existed.
An incorrect conception of the nature of rent is based upon the fact that rent in a natural fonn^ either as tithes to the church, or as a curiosity perpetuated by old contracts, has dragged itself into modern times out of the natural economy of feudal days, quite contrary to the conditions of the capi- talist mode of production. This creates the impression that rent does not arise from the price of the agricultural product, but from its mass, not from social conditions, but from the soil. We have shown previously that a surplus product, rep- resenting a mere increase in the mass of products, does not constitute any surplus-value, although surplus-value represents itself in a surplus product. A surplus product may rep- resent a minus in value. Otherwise the cotton industry of ^^' Adam Smith emphasizes the fact that at his time (and this applies also to the plantations in tropical and subtropical countries in our own time) rent and profit were not yet separated, for the landlord was at the same time a capitalist, just as Cato, for instance, was upon his estates. But this separation is precisely the premise of the capitalist mode of production. Moreover, the basis of slavery stands in contradiction with the nature of capitalist production.
"' Mr. Mommsen, in his Roman history, does not use the term capitalist in the sense in which modern economics and modern society does, but rather in the way pe- culiar to popular conception, such as still continues to vegetate, not in England or America, but upon the European continent, as an ancient tradition of past conditions.
Genesis of Capitalist Ground-Rent. 915 1860, compared to that of 1840, would represent an enormous surplus-value, whereas on the contrary the price of the yarn has fallen. The rent may increase enormously through a succession of crop failures, because the price of cereals rises, although this surplus-value is represented by an absolutely decreasing mass of dearer wheat. Vice versa, the rent may fall through a succession of fertile years, because the price falls, although the fallen rent is represented by a greater mass of cheaper wheat.
With regard to rent in kind it should be noted that it is a mere tradition dragged over from an outgrown mode of produc- tion and eking out an existence as a ruin. Its contradiction to the capitalist mode of production is shown by the fact that it disappeared from private contracts of its own accord, and that it was shaken off by force as an inconsistency in such in- stances as the church tithes in England, where legislation was able to step in. Furthermore, where rent in kind con- tinued to exist on the basis of capitalist production, it was nothing else, and could be nothing else, but an expression of money rent in medieval garb. For instance, wheat is quoted at 40 shillings per quarter. One portion of this wheat has to reproduce the wages contained in it, and must be sold in order to be available for renewed expenditure. Another por- tion must be sold in order to pay its share of the taxes. Seeds and even a part of the manure enter as commodities into the process of reproduction, wherever the capitalist mode of production and division of labor are developed, and they must be bought for the purposes of reproduction. There- fore another portion of this quarter must be sold, in order to get money for these things. To the extent that they do not have to be bought as actual commodities, but are taken in their natural form out of the product, in order to enter once more as means of production into its reproduction — which is done, not only in agriculture, but in many other lines of production which create constant capital — they figure in the accounts as money of account and are thus de- ducted as component parts of the cost-price. The wear and tear of machinery, and of fixed capital in general, must be gi6 Capitalist Production.
made good in money. And finally comes the profit, which is calculated on the basis of this sum of costs expressed eitlrer in real or in accounting money. This profit is represented by a definite portion of the gross product, which is determined by its price. The portion which then remains is the rent. If the rent in kind stipulated by contract is greater than this remainder determined by the price, then it is not a rent, but a deduction from the profit. On account of this possi- bility alone rent in kind is an old form, to the extent that it does not follow the price of the product, but may amount to more or less than the real rent, so that it may not only contain a deduction from the profit, but also from elements required for the reproduction of the capital. In fact, this rent in kind, so far as it is a rent, not merely in name but in essence, is exclusively determined by the excess of the price of the product over its cost of production. Only it assumes this variable magnitude to be a constant one. But it is such a comforting reflection that the natural product should suf- fice, in the first place, to maintain the laborer, in the second place, to leave for the capitalist tenant more food than he needs, and finally, that the remainder should form a natural rent. The same fancy is indulged in when a manufacturer of cotton goods produces 200,000 yards of them. These yards are supposed to suffice for the purpose of clothing his labor- ers, his wife and all his offspring, together with himself abundantly, to leave over some cotton for sale, and besides to pay an enormous rent with cotton goods. The matter is so simple! Deduct the cost of production from 200,000 yards of cotton goods, and a surplus must remain for rent. But it is indeed a naive conception, to deduct the cost of pro- duction of, say, 10,000 pounds sterling from 200,000 yards of cotton, without knowing the selling price, to deduct money from cotton goods, to deduct from a natural use-value an ex- change-value, and thus to determine the surplus of yards of cotton goods over pounds of sterling. It is worse than the squaring of the circle, which is at least based upon the con- ception that there is a boundary at which straight lines and curves flow imperceptibly into each other. But such is the Genesis of Capitalist Ground-Rent. 917 recipe of Mr. Passy. Deduct money from cotton goods, be- fore the cotton goods have been converted into money, either in your head or in reality! What remains is the rent, which, however, is to be grasped tangibly (see for instance, Karl Arnd) and not by deviltries of sophistry. The entire resto- ration of rent in kind amounts really to this foolishness, to this deduction of the price of production from so and so many bushels of wheat, the subtraction of a sum of money from a cubic measure.
11. Labor Rent.
If we observe ground-rent in its simplest form, that of la- bor rent, which means that the direct producer cultivates during a part of the week, with instruments of labor (plow, cattle, etc.), actually or legally belonging to him, the soil owned by him in fact, and works during the remaining days upon the estate of the feudal lord, without any compensation from the feudal lord, the proposition is quite clear, for in this case rent and surplus-value are identical. The rent, not the profit, is here the form through which the unpaid surplus labor expresses itself. To what extent the laborer, the self- sustaining serf, can here secure for himself a surplus above his indispensable necessities of life, a surplus above the thing which we would call wages under the capitalist mode of pro- duction, depends, other circumstances remaining unchanged, upon the proportion, in which his labor time is divided into labor time for himself and forced labor time for his feudal lord. This surplus above the indispensable requirements of life, the germ of that which appears as profit under the cap- italist mode of production, is therefore wholly determined by the size of the ground-rent, which in this case not only is un- paid surplus labor, but also appears as such. It is unpaid surplus labor for the " owner " of the means of production, which here coincide with the land, and so far as they differ from it, are mere accessories to it. That the product of the laboring serf must suffice to reproduce both his subsistence and his requirements of production, is a fact which remains 9i8 Capitalist Production.
the same under all modes of production. For it is not a re- sult of its specific form, but a natural requisite of all con- tinuous and reproductive labor, of any continued production, which is always a reproduction, including the reproduction of its own labor conditions. It is furthermore evident that in all forms, in which the direct laborer remains the " pos- sessor " of the means of production and labor conditions of his own means of subsistence, the property relation must at the same time assert itself as a direct relation between rulers and servants, so that the direct producer is not free. Tliis is a lack of freedom which may be modified from serfdom with forced labor to the point of a mere tributary relation. The direct producer, according to our assumption, is here in possession of his own means of production, of the material labor conditions required for the realization of his labor and the production^of his means of~subsistence. He carries on his agriculture and the rural house Industries connected witli it as an indepeiTdent producer. This independence is not abolished by the fact that these small farmers may form among themselves a more or less natural commune in produc- tion, as they do in India, since it is here merely a question of independence from the nominal lord of the soil. Under i^ such conditions the surplus labor for the -jaamiaal owner of the land cannot be filched from them by any economic meas- ures, but must be forced from them by other measures, w^hat- ever may be the forrcuassttmed by them.^^^ This is different from slave or plantation economy, in that the slave works with conditions of labor belonging to another. He does not work as an independent producer. This requires conditions of personal dependence, a lack of personal free- dom, no matter to what extent, a bondage to the soil as its accessory, a serfdom in the strict meaning of the word. If the direct producers are not under the sovereignty of a pri- vate landlord, but rather under that of a state which stands over them as their direct landlord and sovereign, then rent and taxes coincide, or rather, there is no tax which differs *^ After a country had been conquered, the next step for the conquerer was always to take possession of the human beings also. Compare Linguet. See also M^er.
Labor Rent. gig from this form of ground-rent. Under these circumstances the subject need not be politically or economically under any harder pressure than that common to all subjection to that state. The state is then the supreme landlord. The sov- ereignty consists here in the ownership of land concentrated on a national scale. But, on the other hand, no private own- ership of land exists, although there is both private and com- mon possession and use of land.
The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus labor is pumped out of the direct producers, determines tlie rela- tion of rulers and ruled, as it grows immediately out of pro- duction itself and reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this is founded the entire formation of the economic community which grows up out of the conditions of produc- tion itself, and this also determines its specific political shape. It is always the direct relation of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers, which reveals the in- nermost secret, the hidden foundation of the entire social construction, and with it of the political form of the relations between sovereignty and dependence, in short, of the corre- sponding form of the state. The form of this relation be^ tween rulers and ruled naturally corresponds always with a definite stage in the development of the methods of labor and of its productive social power. This does not prevent the same economic basis from showing infinite variations and gradations in its appearance, even though its principal con- ditions are everywhere the same. This is due to innumerable outside circumstances, natural environment, race peculiari- ties, outside historical influences, and so forth, all of which must be ascertained by careful analysis.
So much is evident in the case of labor rent, the simplest and most primitive form of rent: The rent is here the orig- inal form of surplus-value and coincides with it. Further- more, the identity of surplus-value with unpaid labor of oth- ers does not need to be demonstrated by any analysis in this case, because it still exists in its visible, palpable form, for the labor of the direct producer for himself is still separated by space and time from his labor for the landlord, and this 920 Capitalist Production.
last labor appears clearly in the brutal form of forced labor for another. In the same way the " quality " of the soil to produce a rent is here reduced to a tangibly open secret, for the nature which here furnishes the rent also includes the human labor-power bound to the soil, and the property rela- tion which compels the owner of labor-power to exert this quality and to keep it busy beyond the measure required for the satisfaction of his own material needs. The rent con- sists directly in the appropriation, by the landlord, of this surplus expenditure of labor-power. For the direct producer pays no other rent. Here, where surplus-value and rent are not only identical, but where surplus-value obviously has the form of surplus labor, the natural conditions, or limits, of rent lie on the surface, because those of surplus-value do. The direct producer must, 1), possess enough labor-power, and 2), the natural conditions of his labor, ^yllich means in the first place the soil cultivated by him, must be productive enough, in one word, the natural productivity of his labor) must be so great that the possibility of some surplus labors over and above that required for the satisfaction of his own:> needs shall remain. It is not this possibility which creates the rent. The rent is not created until compulsion makes a reality of this possibility. But the possibility itself is con- ditioned upon subjective and objective facts of nature. And there is nothing mysterious about it. If the labor-power is small, and the natural conditions of labor poor, then the sur- plus labor is small^ but so are in that case the wants of the producers on one side and the relative numbers of the ex- ploiters of surplus labor on the other, and so is finally the surplus product, by which this little productive surplus labor is represented for those few exploiting land owners.
Finally, labor rent implies in itself that, all other circum- stances remaining equal, it will depend wholly upon the rela- tive amount of surplus labor, or forced labor, to what extent the direct producer shall be enabled to improve his own con- dition, to acquire wealth, to produce a surplus over and above his indispensable means of subsistence, or, if we wish to an- ticipate the capitalist mode of expression, whether he shall be } Labor Rent. 921 able to produce a profit for himself, and how much of a profit, meaning a surplus over the wages produced by himself. The rent is here the normal, all absorbing, one might say legiti- mate, form of surplus labor. So far from being a surplus over the profit, which means in this case in excess of any other surplus over the wages, it is rather the amount of profit, and even its very existence, which depends, other circum- stances being equal, upon the amount of rent, or upon the forced surplus labor to be surrendered to the landlord.
Some historians have expressed astonishment that it should be possible for the forced laborers, or serfs, to acquire any independent property, or relatively speaking, wealth, under such circumstances, since the direct producer is not an owner, but only a possessor, and since all his surplus labor belongs legally to the landlord. However, it is evident that tradition must play a very powerful role in the primitive and undevel- oped circumstances, upon which this relation in social pro- duction and the corresponding mode of production are based. It is furthermore clear that here as everywhere else it is in the interest of the ruling section of society to sanction the existing order as a law and to perpetuate its habitually and tra- ditionally fixed limits as legal ones. Aside from all other matters, this comes about of itself in proportion as the con- tinuous reproduction of the foundation of the existing order and of the relations corresponding to it gradually assume a regulated and orderly form. And such regulation and order are themselves indispensable elements of any mode of pro- duction, provided that it is to assume social firmness and an independence from mere accident and arbitrariness. It is just through them that society is rendered more firm and emancipated relatively from mere arbitrariness and mere ac- cident. Society assumes this form by the repeated reproduc- tio-n of the same mode of production, where the process of production stagnates and with it the corresponding social re- lations. If this continues for some time, this order fortifies itself by custom and tradition and is finally sanctioned as ^n expressed law. Since the form of this surplus labor, of forced labor, rests upon the imperfect development of all pro- 922 Capitalist Production.
ductive powers of society, and upon the crudeness of the meth- ods of labor itself, it will naturally absorb a much smaller portion, relatively, of the total labor of the direct producers than under developed modes of production, particularly un- der the capitalist mode of production. Take it, for instance, that the forced labor for the landlord originally amounted to two days per week. These two days of forced labor are fixed, are a constant magnitude, legally regulated by laws of usage or written laws. But the productivity of the remaining days of the week, over which the direct producer has independent control, is a variable magnitude, which must develop in the course of his experience, together with the new wants he ac- quires, together with the expansion of the market for his prod- uct, together with the increasing security which guarantees independence for this portion of his labor-power. These things will spur him on to a greater exertion of his labor- power, and it must not be forgotten that the employment of his labor-power is by no means confined to agriculture, but includes rural house industry. The possibility of a certain economic development, depending, of course, upon the favor of circumstances, upon inborn race characteristics, etc., is open in this case.
^ III. Bent in Kind.
The transformation of labor rent into rent in kind does not change anything in the nature of rent, economically speak- ing. This nature, in the fomis of rent considered here, is such that rent is the sole prevailing and normal form of sur- plus labor, or surplus-value. This, again, expresses the fact that rent is the only surplus labor, or the only surplus product which the direct producer, being in possession of the labor conditions needed for his own reproduction, must give up to the owner of the land, Avhich under this state of things is the one condition of labor embracing everything. And further- more it expresses the fact that land is the only labor condi- tion, which stands opposed to the direct producer as a prop- erty independent of him and held in the hands of another, 1 Rent in Kind. 923