Monopoly in land ownership. The origin of Differential Rent. Differential Rent I

Differential rent invariably arises from the difference between the individual production price of a particular capital having command over the monopolized natural force, on the one hand, and the general production price of the total capital invested in the sphere of production concerned, on the other.

Differential rent does not arise from the absolute increase in the productiveness of employed capital, or labour appropriated by it, since this can only reduce the value of commodities; it is due to the greater relative fruitfulness of specific separate capitals invested in a certain production sphere, as compared with investments of capital which are excluded from these exceptional and natural conditions favoring productiveness. For instance, if the use of steam should offer overwhelming advantages not offered by the use of water-power, despite the fact that coal has value and the water-power has not, and if these advantages more than compensated for the expense, then, the water-power would not be used and could not produce any surplus-profit, and therefore could not produce any rent.

The natural force is not the source of surplus-profit, but only its natural basis, because this natural basis permits an exceptional increase in the productiveness of labour. In the same way, use-value is in general the bearer of exchange-value, but not its cause. If the same use-value could be obtained without labour, it would have no exchange-value, yet it would retain, as before, the same natural usefulness as use-value. On the other hand, nothing can have exchange-value unless it has use-value, i.e., unless it is a natural bearer of labour. Were it not for the fact that the various values are averaged out into prices of production, and the various individual prices of production into a general price of production regulating the market, the mere increase in productivity of labour through utilization of the waterfall would merely lower the price of commodities produced with the aid of this waterfall, without increasing the share of profit contained in these commodities. Similarly, on the other hand, this increased productivity of labour itself would not be converted into surplus-value were it not for the fact that capital appropriates the natural and social productivity of the labour used by it as its own.

The private ownership in itself has nothing to do with the creation of the surplus-value (profit) portion, and therefore, of the price of the commodity in general, which is produced by means of the waterfall. This surplus-profit would also exist if landed property did not exist; for instance, if the land on which the waterfall is situated were used by the manufacturer as unclaimed land. Hence landed property does not create the portion of value which is transformed into surplus-profit, but merely enables the landowner, the owner of the waterfall, to coax this surplus-profit out of the pocket of the manufacturer and into his own. It is not the cause of the creation of such surplus-profit, but is the cause of its transformation into the form of ground-rent, and therefore of the appropriation of this portion of the profit, or commodity-price, by the owner of the land or waterfall.

Let us discuss the unequal results of equal quantities of capital applied to different plots of land of equal size; or, in the case of unequal size, results calculated on the basis of equal areas.

The two general causes of these unequal results — quite independent of capital — are: