i8 
THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. 
more commodities into the market, the price of these com 
modities will fall, consumers will profit thereby, and rent will 
not rise. Mill, indeed, believes that in such a case rent would 
be lowered. Ricardo was perfectly right in maintaining that 
the cause of the rise of rent is the increase of population, 
which, by requiring more food, brings about a rise in its price. 
On the other hand, when there is no want of land, as is the 
case in new countries, rent is almost nil, however productive 
labour may be. The reason of this is evident; the farmer 
will not consent to pay a high price for the enjoyment of a 
farm which he can get almost for nothing elsewhere. What 
remains true in the statement of Rodbertus is that every 
invention, every process which lessens the cost of production, 
permits of an increase of rent. This is a very important point, 
which has not been clearly perceived, and which escaped even 
Ricardo and Mill. 
The capital mistake of Rodbertus, borrowed from him by 
the other German Socialists, is that he makes labour the sole 
source of value. He concludes from it that all commodities 
ought to be exchanged on the footing of the amount of manual 
labour each of them has exacted, and on this basis he has 
sketched the project of a Loan Institution, which closely 
resembles Proudhon’s Bank of Exchange. The workman 
deposits a commodity at the central depot ; this commodity 
is valued according to the number of hours of labour normally 
and on the average necessary to produce it. This is its natural 
price. He receives in payment a credit-note representing these 
hours of labour, and with this credit-note he can buy in the 
common emporium any other commodity the price of which is 
fixed in the same way. This, as may be seen, is putting into 
practice the idea of Adam Smith, that labour, and not coin, 
is the best common measure of values. In the multitude of 
exchanges which take place, hours of labour would,always be 
bartered against hours of labour, or, as Bastiat expresses it, 
services against services. The well-being of each person 
would be proportioned to the part he had taken in the 
national production, without any deduction to the profit of 
anybody. The power of buying would be in proportion to