"Rent," continues M. Proudhon, "is the interest paid on a capital which never perishes, namely -- land. And as the capital is capable of no increase in matter, but only of an indefinite improvement in its use, it comes about that while the interest or profit on a loan ( mutuum ) tends to diminish continually through abundance of capital, rent tends always to increase through the perfecting of industry, from which results the improvement in the use of the land.... Such, in its essence, is rent."(Vol.II, p.265)
This time, M. Proudhon sees in rent all the characteristics of interest, save that it is derived from capital of a specific nature. This capital is land, an eternal capital, "which is capable of no increase in matter, but only an indefinite improvement in its use". In the progressive advance of civilization, interest has a continual tendency to fall, whilst rent continually tends to rise. Interest falls because of the abundance of capital;rent rises owning to the improvements brought about in industry, which results in an ever better utilization of land.
Such, in its essence, is the opinion of M. Proudhon.
Let us first examine how far it is true to say that rent is interest on capital.
For the landed proprietor himself, rent represents the interest on the capital that the land has cost him, or that he would draw from it if he sold it. But in buying or selling land he only buys or sells rent.
The price he pays to make himself a receiver of rent is regulated by the rate of interest in general and has nothing to do with with actual nature of rent. The interest on capital invested in land is in general lower lower than the interest on capital invested in manufacture or commerce. Thus, for those who make no distinction between the interest that the land represents to the owner and the rent itself, the interest on land capital diminishes still more than does the interest on other capital. But it is not a question of the purchase or sale price of rent, of the marketable value of rent, of capitalized rent, it is a question of rent itself.
Farm rent can imply again, apart from rent proper, the interest on the capital incorporated in the land. In this instance the landlord receives this part of the farm rent, not as a landlord but as a capitalist;but this is not the rent proper that we are to deal with.
Land, so long as it is not exploited as a means of production, is not capital. Land as capital can be increased just as much as all the other instruments of production. Nothing is added to its matter, to use M. Proudhon's language, but the lands which serve as instruments of production are multiplied. The very fact of applying further outlays of capital to land already transformed into means of production increases land as capital without adding anything to land as matter -- that is, to the extent of the land. M. Proudhon's land as matter is the Earth in its limitation.
As for the eternity he attributes to land, we grant readily it has this virtue as matter. Land as capital is no more eternal than any other capital.
Gold and silver, which yield interest, are just as lasting and eternal as land. If the price of gold and silver falls, while that of land keeps rising, this is certainly not because of its more or less eternal nature.
Land as capital is fixed capital; but fixed capital gets used up just as much as circulating capital. Improvements to the land need production and upkeep; they last only for a time; and this they have in common with all other improvements used to transform matter into means of production.
If land as capital were eternal, some lands would present a very different appearance from what they do today, and we should see the Roman Campagna, Sicily, Palestine, in all the splendour of their former prosperity.
There are even instances when land as capital might disappear, even though the improvements remain incorporated in the land.
In the first place, this occurs every time rent proper is wiped out by the competition of new and more fertile soils; secondly, the improvements which might have been valuable at one time cease to be of value the moment they become universal owing to the development of agronomy.
The representative of land as capital is not the landlord, but the farmer. The proceeds yielded by land as capital are interest and industrial profit, not rent. There are lands which yield such interest and profit but still yield no rent.
Briefly, land in so far as it yields interest, is land capital, and as land capital it yields no rent, it is not landed property. Rent results from the social relations in which the exploitation of the land takes place. It cannot be a result of the more or less solid, more or less durable nature of the soil. Rent is a product of society and not of the soil.
According to M. Proudhon, "improvement in the use of the land"-- a consequence "of the perfecting of industry" -- causes the continual rise in rent. On the contrary, this improvement causes its periodic fall.
Wherein consists, in general, any improvement, whether in agriculture or in manufacture?? In producing more with the same labor; in producing as much, or even more, with less labor. Thanks to these improvements, the farmer is spared from using a greater amount of labor for a relatively smaller product. He has no need, therefore, to resort to inferior soils, and installments of capital applied successively to the same soil remain equally productive.
Thus, these improvements, far from continually raising rent as M. Proudhon says, become on the contrary so many temporary obstacles preventing its rise.
The English landowners of the 17th century were so well aware of this truth, that they opposed the progress of agriculture for fear of seeing their incomes diminish. (See Petty, an English economist of the time of Charles II.)
