Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 19, 2025
It should have said, "Property is the right to enjoy and dispose at will of another's goods, the fruit of another's industry and labor." HISTORICAL COMMENT. The tax which a victorious nation levies upon a conquered nation is genuine farm-rent.
It is clear that, in such a case, the right of increase is equivalent to a tax levied in advance upon social production. Of what use is this tax? It cannot be levied to supply the community with provisions, for between that and farm-rent there is nothing in common; nor to pay for services and products, for the proprietors, laboring like the others, have labored only for themselves.
II. But, some half-converted proprietor will observe, "Would it not be possible, by suppressing the bank, incomes, farm-rent, house-rent, usury of all kinds, and finally property itself, to proportion products to capacities? That was St.
The ancient philosophers and the Fathers of the Church, who must be regarded here as the representatives of socialism in the early centuries of the Christian era, by a singular fallacy, which arose however from the paucity of economic knowledge in their day, allowed farm-rent and condemned interest on money, because, as they believed, money was unproductive.
Then, between the proprietor and his tenant there is no exchange either of values or services; then, as our axiom says, farm-rent is real increase, an extortion based solely upon fraud and violence on the one hand, and weakness and ignorance upon the other. PRODUCTS say the economists, ARE BOUGHT ONLY BY PRODUCTS. This maxim is property's condemnation.
In fact, the productive power, which at first was one thousand, being now but nine hundred, the production is also reduced to nine hundred, one-tenth of which is ninety. Either, then, ten proprietors out of the one hundred cannot be paid, provided the remaining ninety are to get the whole amount of their farm-rent, or else all must consent to a decrease of ten per cent.
If farm-rent is only a fraction of the supposed product of the proprietor, whatever the amount and value of the property, the same is true in the case of a large number of small and distinct proprietors. For, although one man may use the property of each separately, he cannot use the property of all at the same time. To sum up.
At this point, the impossibilities thicken and become complicated. Property is impossible, because, with a given capital, Production is proportional to labor, not to property. To pay a farm-rent of one hundred at the rate of ten per cent. of the product, the product must be one thousand; that the product may be one thousand, a force of one thousand laborers is needed.
If they had gone no farther than to say that the difference in land has OCCASIONED farm-rent, instead of CAUSED it, this observation would have taught us a valuable lesson; namely, that farm-rent grew out of a desire for equality. Indeed, if all men have an equal right to the possession of good land, no one can be forced to cultivate bad land without indemnification.
Malthus thinks that farm-rent has its source in the power possessed by land of producing more than is necessary to supply the wants of the men who cultivate it. I would ask Malthus why successful labor should entitle the idle to a portion of the products? But the worthy Malthus is mistaken in regard to the fact.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking