Karl Marx Poverty of Philosophy

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the social relations of the time. A piece of land may be very fertile for corn growing, and
yet the market price may decide the cultivator to turn it into an artificial pastureland and
thus render it infertile.
M. Proudhon has improvised his land valuation, which has not even the value of an
ordinary land valuation, only to give substance to the providentially equalitarian aim of
rent.
"Rent," continues M. Proudhon, "is the interest paid on a capital which never perishes,
namely land. And as the capital is capable of no increase in matter, but only of an
indefinite improvement in its use, it comes about that while the interest or profit on a loan
(mutuum) tends to diminish continually through abundance of capital, rent tends always
to increase through the perfecting of industry, from which results the improvement in the
use of the land.... Such, in its essence, is rent."
(Vol.II, p.265)
This time, M. Proudhon sees in rent all the characteristics of interest, save that it is
derived from capital of a specific nature. This capital is land, an eternal capital, "which is
capable of no increase in matter, but only an indefinite improvement in its use". In the
progressive advance of civilization, interest has a continual tendency to fall, whilst rent
continually tends to rise. Interest falls because of the abundance of capital; rent rises
owning to the improvements brought about in industry, which results in an ever better
utilization of land.
Such, in its essence, is the opinion of M. Proudhon.
Let us first examine how far it is true to say that rent is interest on capital.
For the landed proprietor himself, rent represents the interest on the capital that the land
has cost him, or that he would draw from it if he sold it. But in buying or selling land he
only buys or sells rent. The price he pays to make himself a receiver of rent is regulated
by the rate of interest in general and has nothing to do with with actual nature of rent. The
interest on capital invested in land is in general lower lower than the interest on capital
invested in manufacture or commerce. Thus, for those who make no distinction between
the interest that the land represents to the owner and the rent itself, the interest on land
capital diminishes still more than does the interest on other capital. But it is not a
question of the purchase or sale price of rent, of the marketable value of rent, of
capitalized rent, it is a question of rent itself.
Farm rent can imply again, apart from rent proper, the interest on the capital incorporated
in the land. In this instance the landlord receives this part of the farm rent, not as a
landlord but as a capitalist; but this is not the rent proper that we are to deal with.
Land, so long as it is not exploited as a means of production, is not capital. 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 the land. M.
Proudhon's land as matter is the Earth in its limitation. As for the eternity he attributes to
land, we grant readily it has this virtue as matter. Land as capital is no more eternal than
any other capital.
Gold and silver, which yield interest, are just as lasting and eternal as land. If the price of
gold and silver falls, while that of land keeps rising, this is certainly not because of its
more or less eternal nature.
Land as capital is fixed capital; but fixed capital gets used up just as much as circulating
capital. Improvements to the land need production and upkeep; they last only for a time;
and this they have in common with all other improvements used to transform matter into
means of production. If land as capital were eternal, some lands would present a very
different appearance from what they do today, and we should see the Roman Campagna,
Sicily, Palestine, in all the splendour of their former prosperity.
There are even instances when land as capital might disappear, even though the
improvements remain incorporated in the land.
In the first place, this occurs every time rent proper is wiped out by the competition of
new and more fertile soils; secondly, the improvements which might have been valuable
at one time cease to be of value the moment they become universal owing to the
development of agronomy.
The representative of land as capital is not the landlord, but the farmer. The proceeds
yielded by land as capital are interest and industrial profit, not rent. There are lands which [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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