Principles Of Political Economy
- Автор: Mill John Stuart
- Год: 2022
- Язык: английский
- Год: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
- Жанр: Политика
Электронная книга - «Principles Of Political Economy». Краткое содержание книги:
Beside discussing descriptive issues such as which nations tended to benefit more in a system of trade based on comparative advantage (Mill's answer: those with more elastic demands for other countries' goods), the work also discussed normative issues such as ideal systems of political economy, critiquing proposed systems such as communism and socialism.
Along with A System of Logic, Principles of Political Economy established Mill's reputation as a leading public intellectual. Mill's sympathetic attitude in this work and in other essays toward contemporary socialism, particularly Fourierism, earned him esteem from the working class as one of their intellectual champions.
The discussion of rent is here followed wholly from the point of view of value, while before (Book II, Chap. VI) the law of rent was reached through a limitation of the quantity of land due to the influence of population. In the former case the rent and produce were stated in bushels. By introducing price now (as the convenient symbol of value), instead of the separate increased demands of population in our illustration than used (p. 240), it will be seen how the same operation, looking at it solely in respect to value, brings us to the same law:
Price per Bushel. A B C D 24 bushels 18 bushels 12 bushels 6 bushels Total value of product. Rent. Total value of product. Rent. Total value of product. Rent. Total value of product. $1.00 $24.00 $0.00 .... .... .... .... .... $1.33 $32.00 $8.00 $24.00 $0.00 .... .... .... $2.00 $48.00 $24.00 $36.00 $12.00 $24.00 $0.00 .... $4.00 $96.00 $72.00 $72.00 $48.00 $48.00 $24.00 $24.00It was long thought by political economists, among the rest even by Adam Smith, that the produce of land is always at a monopoly value, because (they said), in addition to the ordinary rate of profit, it always yields something further for rent. This we now see to be erroneous. A thing can not be at a monopoly value when its supply can be increased to an indefinite extent if we are only willing to incur the cost. As long as there is any land fit for cultivation, which at the existing price can not be profitably cultivated at all, there must be some land a little better, which will yield the ordinary profit, but allow nothing for rent: and that land, if within the boundary of a farm, will be cultivated by the farmer; if not so, probably by the proprietor, or by some other person on sufferance. Some such land at least, under cultivation, there can scarcely fail to be.
Rent, therefore, forms no part of the cost of production which determines the value of agricultural produce. The land or the capital most unfavorably circumstanced among those actually employed, pays no rent, and that land or capital determines the cost of production which regulates the value of the whole produce. Thus rent is, as we have already seen, no cause of value, but the price of the privilege which the inequality of the returns to different portions of agricultural produce confers on all except the least favored portion.
Rent, in short, merely equalizes the profits of different farming capitals, by enabling the landlord to appropriate all extra gains occasioned by superiority of natural advantages. If all landlords were unanimously to forego their rent, they would but transfer it to the farmers, without benefiting the consumer; for the existing price of corn would still be an indispensable condition of the production of part of the existing supply, and if a part obtained that price the whole would obtain it. Rent, therefore, unless artificially increased by restrictive laws, is no burden on the consumer: it does not raise the price of corn, and is no otherwise a detriment to the public than inasmuch as if the state had retained it, or imposed an equivalent in the shape of a land-tax, it would then have been a fund applicable to general instead of private advantage.
The nationalization of the land, consequently, would not benefit the laboring-classes a whit through lowering the price to them, or any consumer, of food or agricultural produce.
§ 3. Rent of Mines and Fisheries and ground-rent of Buildings, and cases of gain analogous to Rent.
Agricultural productions are not the only commodities which have several different costs of production at once, and which, in consequence of that difference, and in proportion to it, afford a rent. Mines are also an instance. Almost all kinds of raw material extracted from the interior of the earth—metals, coals, precious stones, etc.—are obtained from mines differing considerably in fertility—that is, yielding very different quantities of the product to the same quantity of labor and capital. There are, perhaps, cases in which it is impossible to extract from a particular vein, in a given time, more than a certain quantity of ore, because there is only a limited surface of the vein exposed, on which more than a certain number of laborers can not be simultaneously employed. But this is not true of all mines. In collieries, for example, some other cause of limitation must be sought for. In some instances the owners limit the quantity raised, in order not too rapidly to exhaust the mine; in others there are said to be combinations of owners, to keep up a monopoly price by limiting the production. Whatever be the causes, it is a fact that mines of different degrees of richness are in operation, and since the value of the produce must be proportional to the cost of production at the worst mine (fertility and situation taken together), it is more than proportional to that of the best. All mines superior in produce to the worst actually worked will yield, therefore, a rent equal to the excess. They may yield more; and the worst mine may itself yield a rent. Mines being comparatively few, their qualities do not graduate gently into one another, as the qualities of land do; and the demand may be such as to keep the value of the produce considerably above the cost of production at the worst mine now worked, without being sufficient to bring into operation a still worse. During the interval, the produce is really at a scarcity value.