Ground Rent
Capital Volume 3, Part 6,
Transformation of Surplus-Profit into Ground-Rent
In this 11-chapter part of
Capital Volume 3, Karl Marx relates capital (reproduction of surplus value) to
the much older concept and practice of rent, and shows how rent becomes part of
the capitalistic system. Our chosen Chapter 38 (download linked below)
deals with the “surplus-profit” over and above the general rate of profit, that
may arise from fortuitous factors like the possession of a waterfall; and the concept
of differential rent as a means of taking account of such a variation from the
norm.
But first, we exploit the
summarising paragraphs on rent that Marx gives in the Introduction to this
section. They bear upon the question of mining
as much as upon agriculture (shortened):
“The analysis of landed property in its various
historical forms is beyond the scope of this work. We shall be concerned with it only in so far as a portion of the
surplus-value produced by capital falls to the share of the landowner. We
assume, then, that agriculture is dominated by the capitalist mode of
production just as manufacture is; in other words, that agriculture is carried
on by capitalists who differ from other capitalists primarily in the manner in
which their capital, and the wage-labour set in motion by this capital, are
invested. So far as we are concerned, the farmer produces wheat, etc., in much
the same way as the manufacturer produces yarn or machines. The assumption that
the capitalist mode of production has encompassed agriculture implies that it
rules over all spheres of production and bourgeois society, i.e., that its
prerequisites, such as free competition among capitals, the possibility of
transferring the latter from one production sphere to another, and a uniform
level of the average profit, etc., are fully matured. The form of landed
property which we shall consider here is a specifically historical one, a form
transformed through the influence of capital and of the capitalist mode of
production, either of feudal landownership, or of small-peasant agriculture as
a means of livelihood, in which the possession of the land and the soil
constitutes one of the prerequisites of production for the direct producer, and
in which his ownership of land appears as the most advantageous condition for
the prosperity of his mode of production.
“Just as the capitalist mode of production in general
is based on the expropriation of the conditions of labour from the labourers,
so does it in agriculture presuppose the expropriation of the rural labourers
from the land and their subordination to a capitalist, who carries on
agriculture for the sake of profit…
“For our purposes it is necessary to study the modern
form of landed property, because our task is to consider the specific
conditions of production and circulation which arise from the investment of
capital in agriculture. Without this, our analysis of capital would not be
complete… (Or, instead of agriculture,
we can use mining because the laws are the same for both.)
“Landed property is based on the monopoly by certain
persons over definite portions of the globe, as exclusive spheres of their
private will to the exclusion of all others. With this in mind, the problem is
to ascertain the economic value, that is, the realisation of this monopoly on
the basis of capitalist production.
“With the legal power of these persons to use or
misuse certain portions of the globe, nothing is decided. The use of this power
depends wholly upon economic conditions, which are independent of their will.
The legal view itself only means that the landowner can do with the land what
every owner of commodities can do with his commodities. And this view, this
legal view of free private ownership of land, arises in the ancient world only
with the dissolution of the organic order of society, and in the modern world
only with the development of capitalist production…
“In the section (in
Volume 1) dealing with primitive accumulation we saw that this mode of
production presupposes, on the one hand, the separation of the direct producers
from their position as mere accessories to the land (in the form of vassals,
serfs, slaves, etc.), and, on the other hand, the expropriation of the mass of
the people from the land.
“To this extent the monopoly of landed property is a
historical premise, and continues to remain the basis of the capitalist mode of
production, just as in all previous modes of production which are based on the
exploitation of the masses in one form or another. But the form of landed
property with which the incipient capitalist mode of production is confronted
does not suit it. It first creates for itself the form required by
subordinating agriculture to capital. It thus transforms feudal landed
property, clan property, small peasant property in mark communes — no matter
how divergent their juristic forms may be — into the economic form
corresponding to the requirements of this mode of production.
“One of the major results of the capitalist mode of
production is that, on the one hand, it transforms agriculture from a mere
empirical and mechanical self-perpetuating process employed by the least
developed part of society into the conscious scientific application of
agronomy, in so far as this is at all feasible under conditions of private
property; that it divorces landed property from the relations of dominion and
servitude, on the one hand, and, on the other, totally separates land as an
instrument of production from landed property and landowner — for whom the land
merely represents a certain money assessment which he collects by virtue of his
monopoly from the industrial capitalist, the capitalist farmer; it dissolves
the connection between landownership and the land so thoroughly that the
landowner may spend his whole life in Constantinople, while his estates lie in
Scotland. Landed property thus receives its purely economic form by discarding
all its former political and social embellishments and associations, in brief
all [its] traditional accessories…
“The rationalising of agriculture, on the one hand,
which makes it for the first time capable of operating on a social scale, and
the reduction ad absurdum of property in land, on the other, are the great
achievements of the capitalist mode of production. Like all of its other
historical advances, it also attained these by first completely impoverishing the direct producers.”
Once again, Marx refers back
to Volume 1. What is more, Marx provides reasons why the land question in South
Africa is so intractable. Land is part of capitalism, and so are mines. There
can be no going back, but only forward, because in its productive aspect, land
has never been more socialised. Only in its ownership can it become more
socialised, and in this respect, fully and finally, only by abolishing
capitalism.
As with banking, so also with
landowning: Under capitalism the take is a portion of surplus-value. This part
shows how such rent arises and how it is calculated for the various conditions,
of which the first one given is as clear as any, and can serve as an example.
Please download and read this text:
No comments:
Post a Comment