Match (commodity)

“ If the quantity of labour realized in commodities, regulate their exchangeable value, every increase of the quantity of labour must augment the value of that commodity on which it is exercised, as every diminution must lower it. ”

“ If the ordinary price is more than this, the surplus part will naturally go to the rent of the land. If it is not more, though the commodity may be brought to market, it can afford no rent to the landlord. Whether the price is or is not more depends on the demand.” “Rent, therefore, enters into the price of commodities in a different way from wages and profits. High or low wages and profit are the causes of high or low price ; high or low rent is the effect of it.” ”

“ But when, as in the case which we are more particularly considering, the advantage depends on the possession of a natural agent of peculiar quality, as for instance of more fertile land than that which determines the general value of the commodity; and when this natural agent is not owned by themselves: the person who does own it, is able to exact from them, in the form of rent, the whole extra gain derived from its use. We are thus brought by another road to the Law of Rent, investigated in the concluding chapter of the Second Book. ”

“ The landlord lives in the capital, or in a foreign country, and demands his rent in gold and silver, which can easily be transported to him. Great undertakers, and manufacturers, and merchants arise in every commodity; and these can conveniently deal in nothing but in specie. ”

“ If all his competitors had the same advantages, and used them, the benefit would be transferred to their customers, through the diminished value of the article: he only retains it for himself because he is able to bring his commodity to market at a lower cost, while its value is determined by a higher. All advantages, in fact, which one competitor has over another, whether natural or acquired, whether personal or the result of social arrangements, bring the commodity, so far, into the Third Class, and assimilate the possessor of the advantage to a receiver of rent. ”

“ Whether we were dealing with the price of an ordinary commodity, with joint products, land or capital, we came across relationships which seemed altogether more fundamental than our present industrial system ”

“ As the price or exchangeable value of every particular commodity, taken separately, resolves itself into some one or other, or all of those three parts; so that of all the commodities which compose the whole annual produce of the labour of every country, taken complexly, must resolve itself into the same three parts, and be parcelled out among different inhabitants of the country, either as the wages of their labour, the profits of their stock, or the rent of their land. ”

“ The same exchange value, i.e., the same quantity of incorporated social labour, remains throughout in the hands of the owner of the commodity first in the shape of his own commodity, then in the form of the money for which he exchanged it, and lastly, in the shape of the commodity he buys with that money. ”

“ There is in every society or neighbourhood, an ordinary or average rate of wages and profit in every different employment of labour and stock, regulated by principles to be explained hereafter, as also an ordinary or average rate of rent. These may be called the natural rates at the time when and the place where they prevail; and the natural price of a commodity is what is sufficient to pay for the rent of the land, the wages of the labour, and the profit of the stock necessary for bringing the commodity to market. ”

“ If, on the contrary, the quantity brought to market should at any time fall short of the effectual demand, some of the component parts of its price must rise above their natural rate. If it is rent, the interest of all other landlords will naturally prompt them to prepare more land for the raising of this commodity; if it is wages or profit, the interest of all other laborers and dealers will soon prompt them to employ more labor and stock in preparing and bringing it to market. ”

“ Once the commodity is sold, and the relation v + s is realised for the capitalist in cash, the whole relationship is wiped out and leaves no traces on the commodity. If we examine the commodity and its value, we cannot ascertain whether it has been produced by paid or by unpaid labour, nor in what proportion these have contributed. Only one fact is beyond doubt: the commodity contains a certain quantity of socially necessary labour which is expressed in its exchange. ”

“ These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. ”

“ Wages and profits represent the universal elements in production, while rent maybe taken to represent the differential and peculiar: any difference in favour of certain producers, or in favour of production in certain circumstances, being the source of a gain, which, though not called rent unless paid periodically by one person to another, is governed by laws entirely the same with it. The price paid for a differential advantage in producing a commodity, cannot enter into the general cost of production of the commodity. ”

“ The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labor which it enables him to purchase or command. Labor, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.
The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. ”

“ This continuous allocation to Rent of shares of Labor-produced Wealth may—it constantly does—take88 on Capitalized forms. As Wealth is produced it flows toward the productive factors in two distinct and continuous streams—Wages for Labor and Rent for Land. But as Land has in business custom the rank of a commodity, the legal right of its owners to appropriate Rent assumes the form of Capitalized Land Value. An annual income from Rent, for example, be that income actual or only potential, may be bought and sold in business intercourse for a Capital sum or “purchase money.” ”

“ In comparing therefore the value of the same commodity, at different periods of time, the consideration of the comparative skill and intensity of labour, required for that particular commodity, needs scarcely to be attended to, as it operates equally at both pe14riods. ”

“ Wherefore to return to the matter in hand, I say, that the Quantity of Commodity produced, and the Quantity of the ——— shews the effects of the Land; and the number of People living thereupon, with the Quality of their housing, shews the Value of the Commodity; for one days delicate and exquisit Food may be worth ten of ordinary. ”

“ The produce, on the cottier system, being divided into two portions, rent, and the remuneration of the labourer; the one is evidently determined by the other. The labourer has whatever the landlord does not take: the condition of the labourer depends on the amount of rent. But rent, being regulated by competition, depends upon the relation between the demand for land, and the supply of it. The demand for land depends on the number of competitors, and the competitors are the whole rural population. ”

“ In stating the principles which regulate exchangeable value and price, we should carefully distinguish between those variations which belong to the commodity itself, and those which are occasioned by a variation in the medium in which value is estimated, or price expressed. ”

“ And so the producers, who are more favourably placed, obtaining the same price as those who are less advantageously situated for commodities which have cost less to produce and to place on the market, have a surplus in hand, which competition for the enjoyment of their advantages compels them to hand over to those who have their control and disposal. ”

“ If he can buy next door a commodity of daily consumption better and cheaper than at the other end of the town, we may affirm that, if he does not buy next door, some special relation between him and the remoter shopkeeper furnishes a strong reason for taking a worse commodity at greater cost of money and trouble. ”

“ And, first, I premise that labour is, as I have already intimated, a commodity, and, as such, an article of trade. If I am right in this notion, then labour must be subject to all the laws and principles of trade, and not to regulation foreign to them, and that may be totally inconsistent with those principles and those laws. When any commodity is carried to market, it is not the necessity of the vender, but the necessity of the purchaser, that raises the price. The extreme want of the seller has rather (by the nature of things with which we shall in vain contend) ”

“ Since no commodity can stand in the relation of equivalent to itself, and thus turn its own bodily shape into the expression of its own value, every commodity is compelled to choose some other commodity for its equivalent, and to accept the use-value, that is to say, the bodily shape of that other commodity as the form of its own value. ”

“ If we examine, on what the pecuniary value of labour, and the pecuniary value of the use of land, depend, we shall find that it is on the very same causes by which we found that wages and rent would be regulated if there were no money and no exchange of commodities. ”

“ Whether the surplus of Production or possible Production be called Rent for Land, or deductions from Wages for superior opportunities to Labor, or be otherwise distinguished from Wages for Labor, it none the less exists as a distinct and natural allocation of Wealth produced from and upon Land by Labor. Although Rent depends wholly upon Labor for its Production it is a differential gain in Wealth which is due not to superior productiveness of Labor but to relative superiority of different kinds and locations of Land. ”

“ If I buy land for a small price and hold it until I can sell it for a large price, I have become rich, not by wages for my labour or by interest upon my capital, but by the increase of rent. Rent, in short, is the share in the wealth produced which the exclusive right to the use of natural resources gives to the owner. Wherever any land has an exchange value there is rent in the economic meaning of the term. Wherever land having a value is used, either by owner or hirer, there is rent actual; wherever it is not used, but still has a value, there is rent potential. ”

“ Once more, the cost of conveyance to the market may differ according to the market in view, and lands favourably situated for one market may be disadvantageously placed for another, and vice versâ. And lastly, as rent is the surplus above the expenses of production, or, as it is sometimes termed, the 'leavings' of wages and profits, the differential advantages of different lands as instruments of production may vary as the rates of wages and profits themselves vary. ”

“ The custom of the country is the universal rule: nobody thinks of raising or lowering rents, or of letting land on other than the customary conditions. Competition, as a regulator of rent, has no existence.
§ 3.⁠Prices, whenever there was no monopoly, came earlier under the influence of competition, and are much more universally subject to it, than rents: but that influence is by no means, even in the present activity of mercantile competition, so absolute as is sometimes assumed. ”

“ It would not be difficult to show that they are not in conflict, but rather in harmony, with the theory of rent in making such a provision; for the tenants have sunk capital in the cultivation of land, which they cannot withdraw and offer for sale in the best market.
Again, the theory of rent assumes that tenants cultivate with a single eye to the sale of the produce in the market; for it is only by starting with the conditions determining the selling-price that we arrive at the establishment of differential advantages enjoyed by different producers, and the consequent existence of rent. ”

“ We have shewn that in early stages of society, both the landlord's and the labourer's share of the value of the produce of the earth, would be but small; and that it would increase in proportion to the progress of wealth, and the difficulty of procuring food. We have shewn too, that although the value of the labourer's portion will be increased by the high value of food, his real share will be diminished; whilst that of the landlord will not only be raised in value, but will also be increased in quantity. ”

“ Wages, profits, interest and rent take the product.—It is common to consider distribution as made in the forms of wages for labor given without risk as to the product, profits to the one whose labor is associated with risk of loss as well as gain, interest to the one who furnishes capital in any form and waits for his compensation, and rent to the landlord, or owner of estate, whose property is used for a definite time and returned. ”

“ All allocations of Wealth, from the two primary ones—Wages and Rent—to the least of all that are secondary to either of those two, are made through Trade, and in the course of Trade are measured by comparisons of Value, which is the universal regulator of Trade. And as in Production so in Distribution, for Value measurements Money is the more or less stable yardstick and Money terms the spokesmen. ”

“ Rent is that proportion of total Wealth production which results from the use by Labor of Land lying above the Economic frontier, which in Economic terminology is best known as the Margin of Production.
For illustration, here are two tracts of agricultural Land of equal area and equal accessibility. One will yield to a standard of Labor-power more Wealth than the other, for the soil is richer. It will therefore be in greater demand by Labor than the other. ”