[60] 'Quesnay's _Tableau Économique_ shows ... how the result of
national production in a certain year, amounting to some definite value,
is distributed by means of the circulation in such a way, that ...
reproduction can take place.... The innumerable individual acts of
circulation are at once viewed in their characteristic social mass
movement--the circulation between great social classes distinguished by
their economic function' (_Capital_, vol. ii, p. 414).
[61] Cf. _Analyse du Tableau Économique_, in _Journal de l'Agriculture,
du Commerce et des Finances_, by Dupont (1766), pp. 305 ff. in Oncken's
edition of _OEuvres de F. Quesnay_. Quesnay remarks explicitly that
circulation as he describes it is based upon two conditions: unhampered
trade, and a system of taxation applying only to rent: 'Yet these facts
have indispensable conditions; that the freedom of commerce sustains the
sale of products at a good price, ... and moreover, that the farmer need
not pay any other direct or indirect charges but this income, part of
which, say two sevenths, must form the revenue of the Sovereign' (op.
cit., p. 311).
[62] Adam Smith, _An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations_ (ed. MacCulloch, Edinburgh London, 1828), vol. i, pp. 86-8.
[63] Op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 17-18.
[64] Ibid., pp. 18-19.
[65] Ibid., p. 23.
[66] As to the concept of 'national capital' specific to Rodbertus, see
below, Section II.
[67] J. B. Say, _A Treatise on Political Economy_ (transl. by C. R.
Prinsep, vol. ii, London, 1821); pp. 75-7.
[68] Attention must be drawn to the fact that Mirabeau in his
_Explications_ on the _Tableau Économique_ explicitly mentions the fixed
capital of the unproductive class: 'The primary advances of this class,
for the establishment of manufactures, for instruments, machines, mills,
smithies (ironworks) and other factories ... (amount to) 2,000 million
livres' (_Tableau Économique avec ses Explications_, 1760, p. 82). In
his confusing sketch of the _Tableau_ itself, Mirabeau, too, fails to
take this fixed capital of the sterile class into account.
[69] Smith accordingly arrives at this general formulation: 'The value
which the workmen add to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in
this case into two parts, of which the one pays their wages, the other
the profits of their employer upon the whole stock of materials and
wages which he advanced' (op. cit., vol. i, p. 83). Further, in Book II,
chap. 8, on industrial labour in particular: 'The labour of a
manufacturer adds generally to the value of the materials which he works
upon, that of his own maintenance and of his master's profit. The labour
of a menial servant, on the contrary, adds to the value of nothing.
Though the manufacturer has his wages advanced to him by his master, he
in reality costs him no expense, the value of those wages being
generally restored, together with a profit, in the improved value of the
subject upon which his labour is bestowed' (op. cit., vol. ii, pp.
93-4).
[70] 'The labourers ... therefore, employed in agriculture, not only
occasion, like the workmen in manufactures, the reproduction of a value
equal to their own consumption, or to the capital which employs them,
together with its owner's profit, but of a much greater value. Over and
above the capital of the farmer and all its profits, they regularly
occasion the reproduction of the rent of the landlord' (ibid., p. 149).
[71] Ibid., pp. 97-8. Yet already in the following sentence Smith
converts capital completely into wages, that is variable capital: 'That
part of the annual produce of the land and labour of any country which
replaces a capital, never is immediately employed to maintain any but
productive hands. It pays the wages of productive labour only. That
which is immediately destined for constituting a revenue, either as
profit or as rent, may maintain indifferently either productive or
unproductive hands' (ibid., p. 98).
[72] Ibid., p. 19.
[73] Smith, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 19-20.
[74] Ibid., vol. i, pp. 21-2.
[75] Ibid., p. 22.
[76] Ibid.
_CHAPTER III_