Ground Rent
Capital Volume 3, Part 6,
Transformation of Surplus-Profit into Ground-Rent
In this 11-chapter, Part 6, of
Capital Volume 3, Karl Marx relates capital (reproduction of surplus value) to
the much older, pre-capitalist concept and practice of rent. He shows how rent
became, and remains, 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, let us exploit the
summarising paragraphs on rent, given below in a shortened version, which Marx
gives in the Introduction to this section. Note that, as Marx reminds us, these
remarks bear upon the question of mining
as much as they bear upon agriculture:
“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 matters dealt with in Volume 1.
Among other things, Marx is
here providing us with explanations as to 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 land become more
socialised than it already is, and it can only be fully re-socialised by the
complete abolition of 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 example given is as clear as any, and can serve as typical.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Capital Volume 3,
Chapter 38, Differential Rent: General Remarks.
