[897] “In a social State of this description people produce, not with a view to satisfying the needs of labour, but the needs of possession; in other words, they produce for those who possess.” (Kapital, p. 161. Cf. also p. 51.)
[898] “Provided we knew the time that a person could afford to devote to the work of production, we could easily determine the quantity that would be sufficient to satisfy the needs of everybody.” (Kapital, p. 109.)
[899] Ibid., p. 108.
[900] Kapital, p. 143.
[901] The question of the net and gross product was one of the outstanding problems of this period. Vidal (Répartition des Richesses, p. 219, Paris, 1846) and Ott (Traité d’Économie sociale, p. 95, 1851) lay stress upon it. Since then Cournot, Dühring, and more recently Effertz and Landry, have handled the problem anew. But each of them when he comes to define the word “productivity” defines it in his own fashion, so that they do not really discuss the same question. Rodbertus, as we shall have occasion to point out in the text, uses the word in a very vague fashion indeed, but still it is the basis of his whole discussion. It seems to us that under a régime of division of labour rentability should be the one criterion. But it would be a mistake to imagine that when dwindling profits make a change in the methods of production imperative, that change will be welcomed with equal enthusiasm by everybody, by both master and worker alike.
[902] He is dealing merely with individual wants. Rentability is not the only guide. Many collective wants must be satisfied, but the process is not always a profitable one. The problem is to determine which are those wants. Rodbertus is speaking of private wants; he has taken good care to leave the public needs aside, so that his argument applies only to the former.
[903] Kapital, pp. 164-166.
[904] Rodbertus further adds that a portion of everybody’s income should be expended in supplying such public needs. (Kapital, pp. 132-133.)
[905] Kapital, pp. 150-160.
[906] Cf. Zur Erkenntniss, pp. 7-10: “Every economic good costs labour and only labour.” In the third of the Soziale Briefe he expresses this idea in a slightly different form: “All economic goods are the product of labour” (Schriften, vol. ii, pp. 105-106). Developing the same thought, he declares that this formula means: (1) that “only those goods which have involved labour should figure in the category of economic goods”; (2) that, “economically speaking, goods are regarded, not as the product of nature or of any other force, but simply as the product of labour”; (3) that “goods economically considered are just the product of labour, carried out by means of the material operations which are necessary for production.” The work of industrial direction and its remuneration are regarded in the same light. Cf. Schriften, vol. ii, p. 219.