Economic essays

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

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Title:: A functional theory of economic profit / Charles A. Tuttle

Collection:: Economics Books

A FUNCTIONAL THEORY OF ECONOMIC PROFIT 329 ‘hat the reduction of society to a static condition would be, at least, as powerless to eliminate profit as it evidently is to oliminate wages, interest, and rent. Dynamic changes would naturally affect all of the functional shares in distribution. We are now ready to take up the problem of a functional theory of economic profit, which shall coordinate with the functional theories of the other shares, as determined by one ceneral law of distribution,—the marginal productivity principle. In the analysis of the problem, it is important to keep clearly in mind that man, on the one side, and nature, on the other, are the primary economic factors. The economic struggle, today as always, is directed upon nature. Originally, an individualistic struggle between men and small portions of nature, it 1s now a highly organized one between mankind and the earth. The economic motive is the same today, as in the beginning,—namely, to wrest from a reluctant nature the means of satisfying human wants. It was the pressure of increasing population, and the developing nature of man as seen in his multiplying and diversify- ing wants, that made the results of a law of diminishing returns early manifest. The significance of capital, in making possible organization and a more effective use of human energy in the otherwise hopeless economic struggle, is thus revealed. Capital, accordingly, appears to be man’s “master key” of progress in the struggle with nature. When the classical economists directed attention to the nat- gral tendency of population to outrun the means of subsistence, hostility to private property in land was beginning to manifest itself. Savs Adam Smith: * As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. Men had to pay for the license to gather “the wood of the forest, ‘he grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth.” ! The discovery of a natural law of diminishing returns, there- fore, was made in time to rescue private property in land. In the hands of the Ricardians, this law made it possible to differentiate the product of land from the product of labor and capital, and to prove that the landlord is not an exploiter of labor. Units of - Wealth of Nations, Vol. I, Chap. VI.

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