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.