Chapter 39: The First Form of Differential Rent (Differential Rent I)

‘Rent’ (i.e. differential rent; he assumes that there is no other rent in existence besides this) ‘is always the difference between the produce obtained by the employment of two equal quantities of capital and labour’ (Principles[Pelican edn, p. 95]).

He should have added ‘on equal quantities of land’, in as much as he is dealing with ground-rent and not with surplus profit in general.

Surplus profit, in other words, if produced in normal conditions and not as a by-product of fortuitous circumstances in the circulation process, is always produced as the difference between the product of two equal amounts of capital and labour, and this surplus profit is transformed into ground-rent if two equal amounts of capital and labour are employed on equal areas of land with unequal results. It is by no means necessarily required, however, that this surplus profit should arise from the unequal results of equal amounts of capital employed. Capitals of different size could also be employed in the different investments, and this is even the general assumption; but equal proportionate parts, for example £100 of each, give unequal results; i.e. the rate of profit varies. This is the general precondition for the existence of surplus profit in any sphere of capital investment whatsoever. The second thing is the transformation of this surplus profit into the form of ground-rent (of rent in general, as a form distinct from profit); we must always investigate when, how and under what circumstances this transformation takes place.

Ricardo is also correct in this next statement, in so far as his remarks are restricted to differential rent:

‘Whatever diminishes the inequality in the produce obtained from successive portions of capital on the same or on new land, tends to lower rent; and whatever increases that inequality, necessarily produces an opposite effect, and tends to raise it’ [p. 106].

These causes, however, do not include only the general ones of fertility and location, but also (1) the distribution of taxes, according to whether this is uniform or not; the latter is always the case when, as in England, taxation is not centralized and the tax is levied on the land and not on the rent; (2) the inequalities that result from the differential development of agriculture in different parts of the country, since this branch of industry, on account of its traditional character, is more difficult to equalize than is manufacture; and (3) the uneven way in which capital is divided among the farmers. As the capitalist mode of production’s seizure of agriculture, the transformation of the independently operating peasant into a wage-labourer, is in fact the final conquest of this mode of production, these inequalities are greater here than in any other branch of industry.

After these preliminary remarks, I intend to start by summarizing quite briefly the particular features of my development in contrast with that of Ricardo, etc.

The two general causes of such unequal products, which are independent of capital, are: (1) fertility (in dealing with this point, we shall have to discuss what is meant by the natural fertility of land, and the different aspects this involves), and (2) the location of land. The latter is decisive in the case of colonies, and decisive everywhere for the sequence in which lands can be successively brought into cultivation. It is also evident that these two different bases for differential rent, fertility and location, can operate in opposite directions. A piece of land may be very well located but of very low fertility, and vice versa. This is an important fact, since it explains to us why, when the land of a particular country is originally cultivated, it is possible to proceed from worse soil to better as well as the other way round. It is finally clear that the progress of social production in general has on the one hand a levelling effect on location as a basis for differential rent, since it creates local markets and improves location by producing means of communication and transport; while on the other hand it increases the differences of geographical location, by separating agriculture from manufacture and forming great centres of production, while also relatively isolating the countryside.

First of all, however, we shall leave aside this point of location and simply consider natural fertility. Apart from climatic and similar aspects, differences in natural fertility are differences in the chemical composition of the soil, i.e. variations in the amount of nutrient elements for plants it contains. However, assuming the same chemical composition and in this sense the same natural fertility of two areas of land, their actual effective fertility will differ according to how far these nutrient elements occur in readily assimilable form, and can be directly used as plant foodstuffs. Thus the extent to which the same natural fertility can be obtained on soils that are naturally equally fertile depends in part on the chemical development of agriculture and in part on its mechanical development. Even though fertility is an objective property of the soil, it thus always involves an economic relation, a relation to the given chemical and mechanical level of agricultural development, and changes with this level of development. By chemical means (e.g. the use of certain liquid fertilizers on stiff clayey soil or calcination of heavy clayey soil) and by mechanical means too (e.g. special ploughs for heavy soil), it is possible to remove obstacles which made soils of equal fertility less equal in practice. (Drainage, too, comes under this heading.) The sequence followed in bringing different types of soil into cultivation may also be changed in this way, as it was for instance between light sandy soil and heavy clayey soil at one period of English agricultural development. This further shows how historically – in the successive course of cultivation – there can be both a transition from more fertile soil to less and vice versa. The same thing can happen as a result of artificially induced improvements in the composition of the soil or of a mere change in the hierarchy of soil types when various subsoil conditions come into play, once the subsoil also begins to be tilled and turned over into top layers. This is brought about partly by the use of new agricultural methods (such as the cultivation of fodder grasses) and partly by mechanical means, which either turn the subsoil into the top layer or mix the two together, or else cultivate the subsoil without turning it up.

All these influences on the differential fertility of different soils boil down to the fact that as far as economic fertility is concerned, the level of labour productivity, in this case the ability of agriculture directly to exploit the natural fertility of the soil – an ability that varies with different stages of development – is just as much a factor in the so-called natural fertility of the soil as its chemical composition and other natural properties.

We thus assume a given level of agricultural development. We further assume that the hierarchy of soil types is calculated in relation to this level of development, as is of course always the case with simultaneous capital investments on different lands. The differential rent can then exhibit an increasing or decreasing series, for although the series is given for the totality of lands actually cultivated, these have always been formed by a successive movement.

Assume four types of soil, A, B, C, D. Assume further that the price of wheat is £3, or 60 shillings per quarter. Since the rent here is simply differential rent, this price of 60 shillings per quarter is equal to the production costs on the worst soil, i.e. equal to capital plus average profit.

Let A be this worst soil, giving 1 quarter = 60 shillings for an outlay of 50 shillings; i.e. a profit of 10 shillings or 20 per cent.

Let B yield 2 quarters = 120 shillings for the same outlay. There is a profit of 70 shillings or a surplus profit of 60 shillings.

Let C yield 3 quarters = 180 shillings for the same outlay. Total profit = 130 shillings. Surplus profit = 120 shillings.

Let D yield 4 quarters = 240 shillings; 180 shillings surplus profit.

We would then have the following sequence:

The respective rents are, for D, (190 – 10) shillings, or the difference between D and A; for C, (130 – 10) shillings, or the difference between C and A; for B, (70 – 10) shillings, or the difference between B and A; while the total rent for B, C and D = 6 quarters = 360 shillings, the sum of the differences of D and A, C and A, and B and A.

This series, which represents a given product in a given condition, can just as well occur, when considered in the abstract, as a decreasing series (from D down to A, from the more fertile to ever less fertile soil) or as an increasing one (from A to D, from relatively infertile soil to ever more fertile soil), and we have already given the reasons why this may also be the case in actual fact; it may also fluctuate up and down, as for example from D to C, C to A, and A to B.

The process involved in the decreasing series is as follows. The price per quarter gradually rises from, say, 15 shillings to 60 shillings. Once the 4 quarters produced by D (which we may consider as millions) are no longer sufficient, the wheat price rises to the point at which the missing supply can be obtained from C. That is, the price would have to rise to 20 shillings per quarter. When the wheat price rises to 30 shillings per quarter, B can be brought into cultivation, and when it rises to 60 shillings per quarter, so can A, without any need for the capital applied to make do with a rate of profit lower than 20 per cent. The rent for D is thus first 5 shillings per quarter = 20 shillings for the 4 quarters it produces; then 15 shillings per quarter = 60 shillings, then finally 45 shillings per quarter =180 shillings for 4 quarters.

If the profit rate for D was also 20 per cent to start with, its total profit on the 4 quarters would be only 10 shillings, but this would represent more corn at a price of 15 shillings than at a price of 60 shillings. Since corn goes into the reproduction of labour-power, and one portion of each quarter must replace labour-power and another part constant capital, the surplus-value would therefore be higher under this assumption, and so too, with other factors remaining the same, would the rate of profit. (The question of the profit rate will have to be specially investigated in more detail.)

If the sequence went the opposite way, so that the process began with A, then as soon as new agricultural land had to be taken into cultivation, the price per quarter would rise above 60 shillings; but since the supply needed would come from B, a supply of 2 quarters, it would fall again to 60 shillings; for while B produces at 30 shillings per quarter, it sells at 60 shillings, since its supply is only just sufficient to meet the demand. A rent is thus formed for B which comes initially to 60 shillings, and similarly for C and D; still on the assumption that even though they supply at 20 shillings and 15 shillings per quarter respectively, the market price remains 60 shillings, since the supply of the one quarter that A provides is needed to satisfy the total demand. In this case the rise in demand above the supply that was satisfied first by A, and then by A and B, would not have meant that B, C and D could successively be cultivated, but simply that the overall cultivated area would be expanded, and it might so happen that the more fertile lands came under cultivation only later.

In the first sequence, rents rise with the increase in price and the profit rate declines. This decline could be completely or partially offset by countervailing circumstances, a point which we shall go into in more detail later. It should not be forgotten that the general rate of profit is not uniformly determined by the surplus-value in all spheres of production. It is not agricultural profit that determines industrial, but vice versa. But more on this later, too.

In the second sequence, the profit rate on the capital invested remains the same. The mass of profit is represented by less corn, but the relative price of corn compared with other commodities will have risen. It is just that the increase in profit, where there is such an increase, instead of flowing into the pockets of the industrialist farmers as a growing profit, separates off from profit in the form of rent. The price of corn, however, remains stationary under the assumption made here.

The development and growth of differential rent remains the same, both when prices remain the same and when they rise, and both when there is a steady progression from worse soil to better and when there is a steady regression from better soil to worse.

We formerly assumed (1) that the price rises in the one sequence, and remains stationary in the other; and (2) that there is a steady progression from better soil to worse, or conversely from worse soil to better.

But let us assume that the demand for grain rises from the original 10 qrs to 17 qrs; and further that the worst soil, A, is displaced by another soil which yields 1 1/3 qrs for a production cost of 60 shillings (50s. costs plus 10s. representing a profit of 20 per cent), its production price per qr thus being 45s.; or else that the old soil A has been improved as a result of rational cultivation, or has been cultivated more productively at constant costs, e.g. by the introduction of clover, etc., so that its product rises to 1/3 qrs for the same advance of capital. Let us further assume that soil types B, C and D supply the same product afterwards as before, but that new types of soil come into cultivation: A′ with a fertility between A and B, as well as B′ and B″ with fertilities between B and C. In this case, the following phenomena are met with.

Firstly, the production price of a quarter of wheat, or its governing market price, would fall from 60s. to 45s., or by 25 per cent.

Secondly, there would be at the same time a progression both from more fertile to less fertile soil and from less fertile soil to more fertile. Soil A′ is more fertile than A, but less fertile than B, C and D that were cultivated previously; and B′, B″ are more fertile than A, A′ and B but less fertile than C and D. The sequence would thus take on a criss-cross pattern. The progression would not be towards soil that was absolutely less fertile compared with the formerly most fertile soil types C and D; on the other hand it would not be to absolutely more fertile soil, but simply to soil that was relatively more fertile compared with the previously least fertile A, or A and B.

Thirdly, the rent on B would fall, and similarly the rent on C and D, but the total rental in corn would have risen from 6 qrs to 7 2/3 qrs. The amount of cultivated and rent-bearing land would have increased, and the total product would increase from 10 qrs to 17. Profit, if it remained the same for A, would have risen when expressed in corn; but the profit rate itself might have risen, since

The numerical ratios are as arbitrary here as in all the other tables, but the assumptions are completely reasonable.

The first and major assumption is that the improvement in agriculture has differing effects on different types of soil and in this case has a greater effect on the better soil types C and D than on A and B. Experience shows that this is the general rule, even if the opposite case is also possible. If the improvement had a greater effect on the worse soils than on the better, the rent on the latter would fall instead of rising. With the absolute growth in fertility of all types of soil, the table also presupposes a growth in the higher relative fertility of the better soil types C and D, hence a growth in the difference in products from the same capital investment and a rise in differential rent

The second assumption is that total demand keeps pace with the growing total product. Firstly, it is not necessary to consider the growth as happening suddenly; series III can be considered as arising gradually. Secondly, it is wrong to maintain that the consumption of necessary means of subsistence does not grow when these become cheaper. The abolition of the Corn Laws in England (see Newman)* has proved the opposite, and the contrary conception arose only through the fact that major sudden variations in the harvest, themselves due simply to the weather, produce a sudden disproportionate rise or fall in corn prices. If in this case the sudden and short-lived cheapening does not last long enough to exert its full effect in expanding consumption, the opposite is the case when the fall in price results from a fall in the governing production price itself and is thus of longer duration. Thirdly, part of the grain can be consumed in the form of spirits or beer. And the growth in consumption of these two articles is in no way confined within narrow limits. Fourthly, the matter depends partly on population growth, while the country may also be a corn-exporting one, as England still was until past the middle of the eighteenth century, so that the demand is not governed by the limits of national consumption alone. Finally, the increase and cheapening of wheat production may make wheat into the main staple foodstuff of the mass of the people instead of rye or oats, which already leads to a growth in the market for wheat; the reverse case may arise with a declining product and increasing price. ” On these assumptions, therefore, and given the figures we supposed, series III gives the result that the price per quarter falls from 60s. to 30s., i.e. by 50 per cent, while production grows from 10 qrs to 23, compared with sequence I, i.e. by 130 per cent; the rent on soil B remains the same, while on soil C it rises by 25 per cent and on D by 33 1/3 per cent, the total rental thus rising from £18 to £22 1/2, i.e. by 25 per cent.

The above three tables, in which series I should be taken twice, rising from A to D and falling from D to A, and which may be interpreted either as representing distinctions within a given state of society (e.g. alongside one another in three different countries) or as succeeding one another at various points in the development of the same country, give the following results.

(1) The sequence, when complete, always appears as a decreasing one, whatever the course of its formation might have been; for in considering rents, one will always first proceed from the soil that bears the maximum rent and only come last to that which yields no rent.

(2)The production price of the worst soil that yields no rent is always the governing market price, although, considering Table I, where it is taken as an increasing sequence, this production price would remain stationary only if ever better land were cultivated. In this case, the price of the corn produced on the best soil is the governing one, in so far as the extent to which soil A remains the price-governing soil depends on the quantity produced on the best soil. If B, C and D produce more than is demanded, A ceases to govern. Storch has a vague idea of this when he makes the best type of soil the governing type. * In this way, American grain prices govern English ones.

(3) The differential rent arises from the difference in the natural fertility of soil types that is given for the level of agriculture found in existence at the time (leaving aside here the location), i.e. it arises from the limited extent of the best lands and from the fact that the same capital has to be applied to unequal types of soil, which thus yield unequal products for the same capital.

(4) The existence of a differential rent and a graduated differential rent can be based just as well on a declining scale, in a progression from better soil to worse, as on an ascending scale, from worse soil to better; or it can arise in an alternating criss-cross pattern. (The former case may be formed by a progression either from D to A or from A to D. The latter involves both kinds of movement.)

(5) According to its mode of formation, differential rent can develop along with a stationary, rising or falling price of the agricultural product. In the case of a falling price, the total production and the total rental may rise, so that rent is formed on what was previously non-rent-bearing land, even though the worst soil A has been displaced by better, or has itself been improved, and even though the rent on other better types of soil, and even on the best types, falls (Table II); this process can also be linked with a fall in the total rental (in money). Finally, in the case of falling prices which result from a general improvement in cultivation, so that both the product of the worst soil and its price fall, rent on a portion of the better types of soil may remain the same or fall, while rising on the best types of soil. The differential rent on any soil, moreover, compared with the worst soil, depends on the price of wheat, per quarter for example, if the difference in the quantity produced is given. But when the price is given, it depends on the difference in the amount produced, and in the case of an increasing absolute fertility of all soil that of the better types of soil rises relatively more than that of the worse soils, so that the size of this difference also grows. Given a price of 60s., therefore (Table I), the rent on D is determined by its differential product vis-à-vis A, i.e. by the excess of 3 qrs; the rent is therefore 3 × 60 = 180s. In Table III, however, where the price is 30s., it is determined by the amount of D’s excess product over A, = 8 qrs; but 8 × 30 = 240s.

In this way we can abandon the erroneous conception of differential rent which still prevailed with West, Malthus and Ricardo * and which assumed a necessary progression to ever worse soil, or an ever declining agricultural fertility. As we have seen, differential rent can arise with a progression to ever better soil; it can arise if a better soil takes the lowest place instead of that which was formerly the worst; it can be linked with a steady advance in agriculture. Its only precondition is the inequality of types of soil. In so far as the development of productivity is involved, it assumes that the rise in the absolute fertility of the total acreage does not abolish this inequality, but that it either increases it, leaves it stationary or simply reduces it.

From the beginning to the middle of the eighteenth century, England saw a steady fall in grain prices, despite the falling price of gold and silver, alongside a simultaneous growth in rents (taking the period as a whole), in the total rental, in the extent of land cultivated, in agricultural production and in population. This corresponds to Table I, combined with Table II in an upward direction, but in such a way that the worst soil A is either improved or taken out of cereal cultivation; which however does not mean it is not used for other agricultural or industrial purposes.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century (this date must be indicated more precisely) until 1815, a continuous rise in grain prices, with a steady growth in rent, rental, the extent of land Cultivated, agricultural production and population. This corresponds to Table I in a downward direction. (Reference to be made here to the cultivation of worse lands at that time.)

In the time of Petty and Davenant, complaints of country people and landowners about improvements and ploughing up of commons; fall in rents on better lands, rise in the total rental by extension of rent-bearing land.

(Further references to be given on these three points; similarly on the difference in fertility between different sections of cultivated land in one country.)

In connection with differential rent in general, it should be noted that the market value is always above the total production price for the overall quantity produced. Let us take Table I for instance. The total product of 10 qrs is sold for 600s., since the market price is determined by the production price of A, which comes to 60s. per qr. The actual production price, however, is:

A	1 qr = 60s.	1 qr = 60s.
B	2 qrs = 60s.	1 qr = 30s.
C	3 qrs = 60s.	1 qr = 20s.
D	4 qrs = 60s.	1 qr = 15s.
	10 qrs = 240s.	1 qr = 24s.
		Average

The real production price of the 10 qrs is 240s.; they are sold for 600s., 250 per cent too much. The real average price for 1 qr is 24s.; the market price 60s., similarly 250 per cent too much.

This is determination by a market value brought about by competition on the basis of the capitalist mode of production; it is competition that produces a false social value. This results from the law of market value to which agricultural products are subjected. The determination of the market value of products, i.e. also of products of the soil, is a social act, even if performed by society unconsciously and unintentionally, and it is based necessarily on the exchange-value of the product and not on the soil and the differences in its fertility. If we imagine that the capitalist form of society has been abolished and that society has been organized as a conscious association working according to a plan, the 10 qrs represent a quantity of autonomous labour-time equal to that contained in 240s. Society would therefore not purchase this product at 2 1/2 times the actual labour-time contained in it; the basis for a class of landowners would thereby disappear. This would have the same effect as a cheapening of the product to the same amount by foreign imports. Correct as it is to say that – keeping to the present mode of production, but assuming that differential rent accrued to the state – the prices of agricultural products Would remain the same, if other factors did so too, it is still wrong to say that the value of these products would remain the same if capitalist production were replaced by association. The fact that commodities of the same kind have an identical market price is the way in which the social character of value is realized on the basis of the capitalist mode of production, and in general of production depending on commodity exchange between individuals. Where society, considered as a consumer, pays too much for agricultural products, this is a minus for the realization of its labour-time in agricultural production, but it forms a plus for one portion of society, the landowners.

A second circumstance, important for what will be presented in the next chapter as differential rent II, is as follows.

It is not only the rent per acre or per hectare that is involved here, or in general the distinction between production price and market price, or between individual and general production price per acre; what is also important is how many acres of each type of soil are under cultivation. Here the importance of this has a direct bearing only on the size of the rental, i.e. the total rent for the whole cultivated area; though it serves for us at the same time as a transition to our discussion of a rise in the rate of rent, even when prices do not rise, or the differences in the relative fertility of the soil types do not rise when prices fall. We had earlier:

Firstly. We have seen how the average rent per acre or the average rate of rent on capital may rise with the extension of cultivation, given stationary prices and an unchanged differential fertility of the lands tilled. As soon as all the land in a country is appropriated, and capital investment on the land, agriculture and population have all reached a certain level – factors that are all taken for granted once the capitalist mode of production becomes dominant and takes control of agriculture too – the price of the unfilled land of various qualities (assuming only differential rent) is determined by the price of land of equivalent quality and location that is tilled. The price is the same – after deducting the additional cost of ploughing up new land – even though this land does not bear any rent. The price of land is of course nothing more than capitalized rent. But even in the case of cultivated lands, it is only future rents that are paid for in their price, e.g. twenty years’ rent is paid at one stroke if the determining interest rate is 5 per cent. As soon as land is sold, it is sold as rent-bearing, and the prospective character of the rent (which is considered here as the fruit of the soil, something that it is only in surface appearance) does not distinguish the uncultivated land from the cultivated. The price of untilled land, like its rent, which is what this contracted formula represents, is pure illusion as long as this land is not actually used. But it is determined a priori in this way, and is realized as soon as buyers are found. Thus if the actual average rent in a country is determined by its actual average annual rental and the ratio of this rental to the total cultivated area, the price of the untilled portion is determined by the price of the tilled and is therefore simply a reflection of the capital investment in the tilled lands, and its results there. Since, with the exception of the worst land, all types of soil bear rent (and this rent, as we shall go on to see in the case of differential rent II, rises with the amount of capital and the corresponding intensity of cultivation), a nominal price is thereby formed for the untilled portions of land, so that these too become a commodity, a source of wealth for their owner. This explains at the same time why the price of land rises for the entire area, even for untilled land. (Opdyke.)* Land speculation, e.g. in the United States, depends on this reflection which capital and labour cast on untilled land.

Secondly. All progress in the extension of cultivation takes place either towards worse soil or on the various given types of soil in different proportions, according to how these are to be found. Progression towards worse soil, of course, is never from free choice; taking the capitalist mode of production as given, it can only be the result of rising prices, and in any mode of production only the result of necessity. But this is not absolutely the case. Bad soil may be relatively preferred to better on account of its location, which is decisive for every extension of cultivation in new countries; but also because even though the soil formation in a certain region may be fertile on the whole, better and worse soil may be closely intermingled in some places, so that the inferior soil has to be cultivated simply because of its proximity to the better. If the worse soil forms enclaves within the better, the better soil gives it the advantage of location as against more fertile land that is not yet part of the cultivated area or about to become so.

The state of Michigan, for example, was one of the first Western states to export corn. Its soil on the whole is poor. But its proximity to the state of New York and its water routes via the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal gave it at first an initial advantage over the states further west, though these were more fertile by nature. The example of this state, in comparison with the state of New York, also shows us the transition from better soil to worse. The soil of New York state, and particularly its western part, is of uneven fertility, particularly for wheat cultivation. Rapacious cultivation made this fertile soil infertile, and then the Michigan soil appeared more fertile.

‘In 1838, wheaten flour was shipped at Buffalo for the West; and the wheat-region of New York, with that of Upper Canada, were the main sources of its supply. Now after only twelve years, an enormous supply of wheat and flour is brought from the West, along Lake Erie, and shipped upon the Erie Canal for the East, at Buffalo and the adjoining port of Blackrock… The effect of these large arrivals from the Western States – which were unnaturally stimulated during the years of European famine… has been to render wheat less valuable in western New York, to make the wheat culture less remunerative, and to turn the attention of the New York farmers more to grazing and dairy husbandry, fruit culture, and other branches of rural economy, in which they think the North-West will be unable so directly to compete with them’ (J. W. Johnston, Notes on North America, London, 1851, I, pp. 220–23).

Thirdly. It is false to assume that the soil in those colonies and other new countries that can export corn at cheaper prices is therefore necessarily of greater natural fertility. In this case grain is not only sold below its value, but also below its price of production, i.e. below the production price determined by the average rate of profit in the older countries.

If, as Johnston says (p. 223), we ‘are accustomed to attach the idea of great natural productiveness and of boundless tracts of rich land, to those new States from which come the large supplies of wheat that are annually poured into the port of Buffalo’, this depends first of all on economic conditions. The entire population of a state such as this, e.g. Michigan, begins by being almost exclusively engaged in agriculture, and particularly in the mass crops which alone can be exchanged for industrial goods and tropical products. Their entire surplus product thus takes the shape of corn. This fundamentally distinguishes the colonial states founded on the basis of the modern world market from those of earlier times, and particularly those of antiquity. They receive ready-made, through the world market, products that they would otherwise have to produce themselves, such as clothing, tools, etc. It is only on this basis that the Southern states of the Union could make cotton into their principal product. It is the division of labour on the world market that permits them this. Thus if, considering their newness and their relatively small population, they appear to produce a very large surplus product, this is not due to the fertility of their soil or to the productiveness of their labour, but rather to the one-sided form of this labour and thus of the surplus product in which it is expressed.

Besides, relatively less fertile soil which is tilled for the first time and has never been touched by agriculture before has accumulated so much in the way of easily assimilated plant nutrients, at least in its top layers, that it will yield harvests for a quite long period without any fertilizer – as long as the climatic conditions are not completely unfavourable – even on quite superficial tilling. In the Western prairies, a further factor is that scarcely any clearing costs are required, since nature has made them already arable.^33[a] In less fertile regions of this kind the surplus comes not from the high fertility of the soil, i.e. from the yield per acre, but rather from the great acreage that can be cultivated superficially, since this land costs the tiller nothing, or at least only an infinitesimal amount compared with the older countries. This is true for example where share-cropping is practised, as in parts of New York, Michigan, Canada, etc. A family tills, say, 100 acres superficially, and even though the product per acre is not large, the product of 100 acres provides a sizable surplus for sale. On top of this, cattle, etc. can be grazed almost cost-free on natural pasture, without any need for artificial meadows. The decisive thing here is not the quality of the soil but the quantity. The possibility of this superficial cultivation is of course more or less rapidly exhausted in inverse proportion to the fertility of the new soil and in direct proportion to the export of its product. ‘And yet such a country will give excellent crops, even of wheat, and will supply to those who skim the first cream off the country, a large surplus of this grain to send to market’ (op. cit., p. 225).

In countries where agriculture is older, any such kind of extensive farming is made impossible by the property relations, the price of uncultivated land as determined by that of cultivated, etc.

We can see from the following example that this does not mean, as Ricardo imagines, that this land is necessarily very fertile, nor that only soil types of the same fertility are cultivated. In the state of Michigan, 465,900 acres were sown to wheat in 1848, to produce 4,739,300 bushels or an average of 10 1/5 bushels per acre; this is less than 9 bushels per acre after deducting the seed-corn. Out of twenty-nine counties in the state, two produced an average of 7 bushels; three an average of 8, two 9, seven 10, six 11, three 12, four 13, a single county 16 bushels, and one 18 bushels per acre (op. cit., p. 225).

As far as practical agriculture is concerned, higher fertility of the soil is the same thing as a greater possibility of immediately exploiting its fertility. Immediate exploitation may be more possible with a naturally poor soil than with a naturally rich one; and this is the kind of soil which a colonist will take up first, and must take up when capital is scarce.

Finally. The extension of cultivation to larger areas (apart from the case just considered, in which resort has to be had to a worse soil than that formerly tilled), on the various soil types from A to D, for example, and therefore the tilling of greater areas of B and C, in no way depends on a previous rise in grain prices, any more than the anticipatory annual expansion of a cotton spinning-mill, for instance, depends on a continuous rise in the price of yarn. Even though a major rise or fall in market price does have an effect on the scale of production, there is still, apart from this – and even given average prices, whose level neither inhibits production nor gives it an exceptional boost – the same perpetual relative overproduction in agriculture which is inherently identical with accumulation and which in the case of other modes of production is directly caused by the increase in population, and in the colonies by a steady immigration. Demand steadily grows, and with this prospect new capital is continuously invested in new land; even though this happens for different crops and according to particular circumstances. The formation of new capitals brings this about automatically. But as far as the individual capitalist is concerned, he measures the scale of his production by the capital he has available, to the extent that he can still control it himself. His intention is to take as big a share of the market as possible. If there is overproduction, he blames it on his competitors, not on himself. The individual capitalist can extend his production just as much by appropriating a greater aliquot share of the given market as by expanding this market itself.

Type of soil	Acres	Price of production	Product	Rent in grain	Rent in money
A	2	£6	2 qrs	0	0
B	2	£6	4 qrs	2 qrs	£6
C	2	£6	6 qrs	4 qrs	£12
D	2	£6	8 qrs	6 qrs	£18
Total	8 acres		20 qrs	12 qrs	£36

		Price of production
Type of soil	Acres	Per acre	Total	Product	Rent in grain	Rent in money
A	4	£3	£12	4 qrs	0	0
B	4	£3	£12	8 qrs	4 qrs	£12
C	2	£3	£6	6 qrs	4 qrs	£12
D	2	£3	£6	8 qrs	6 qrs	£18
Total	12 acres		£36	26 qrs	14 qrs	£42

		Price of production
Type of soil	Acres	Per acre	Total	Product	Rent in grain	Rent in money
A	1	£3	£3	1 qr	0	0
B	2	£3	£6	4 qrs	2 qrs	£6
C	5	£3	£15	15 qrs	10 qrs	£30
D	4	£3	£12	16 qrs	12 qrs	£36
Total	12 acres		£36	36 qrs	24 qrs	£72

	Product			Profit		Rent
Type of soil	Quarters	Shillings	Capital advanced	Quarters	Shilings	Quarters	Shillings
A	1	60	50	1/6	10	—	—
B	2	120	50	1 1/6	70	1	60
C	3	180	50	2 1/6	130	2	120
D	4	240	50	3 1/6	190	3	180
Total	10 qrs	600s.				6qrs	360s.