The following examples of wealth are given:-,. . . "Buildings, cattle, tools, machinery, agricultural and mineral products, manufactured goods, ships, waggons, furniture, and the like" .
I take it that native metals, coal and brick clay, are "mineral products"; and I quite believe that they are properly termed "wealth."
But when a seam of coal crops out at the surface, and lumps of coal are to be had for the picking up; or when native copper lies about in nuggets, or when brick clay forms a superficial stratum, it appears to me that these things are supplied to, nay almost thrust upon, man without his labour. According to the definition, therefore, they are not "wealth." According to the enumeration, however, they are "wealth": a tolerably fair specimen of a contradiction in terms. Or does "Progress and Poverty" really suggest that a coal seam which crops out at the surface is not wealth; but that if somebody breaks off a piece and carries it away, the bestowal of this amount of labour upon that particular lump makes it wealth; while the rest remains "not wealth"? The notion that the value of a thing bears any necessary relation to the amount of labour (average or otherwise) bestowed upon it, is a fallacy which needs no further refutation than it has already received. The average amount of labour bestowed upon warming-pans confers no value upon them in the eyes of a Gold-Coast negro; nor would an Esquimaux give a slice of blubber for the most elaborate of ice-machines.
So much for the doctrine of "Progress and Poverty" touching the nature of wealth. Let us now consider its teachings respecting capital as wealth or a part of wealth. Adam Smith's definition "that part of a man's stock which he expects to yield him a revenue is called his capital" is quoted with approval; elsewhere capital is said to be that part of wealth "which is devoted to the aid of production" ; and yet again it is said to be . . . "wealth in course of exchange,understanding exchange to include, not merely the passing from hand to hand, but also such transmutations as occur when the reproductive or transforming forces of nature are utilised for the increase of wealth".
The italics are the author's.
But if too much pondering over the possible senses and scope of these definitions should weary the reader, he will be relieved by the following acknowledgment:-,. . . "Nor is the definition of capital I have suggested of any importance" .
The author informs us, in fact, that he is "not writing a text-book," thereby intimating his opinion that it is less important to be clear and accurate when you are trying to bring about a political revolution than when a merely academic interest attaches to the subject treated.
But he is not busy about anything so serious as a textbook: no, he "is only attempting to discover the laws which control a great social problem"--a mode of expression which indicates perhaps the high-water mark of intellectual muddlement. I have heard, in my time, of "laws" which control other "laws"; but this is the first occasion on which "laws" which "control a problem" have come under my notice. Even the disquisitions "of those flabby writers who have burdened the press and darkened counsel by numerous volumes which are dubbed political economy" could hardly furnish their critics with a finer specimen of that which a hero of the "Dunciad," by the one flash of genius recorded of him, called "clotted nonsense."
Doubtless it is a sign of grace that the author of these definitions should attach no importance to any of them; but since, unfortunately, his whole argument turns upon the tacit assumption that they are important, I may not pass them over so lightly. The third I give up.
Why anything should be capital when it is "in course of exchange," and not be capital under other circumstances, passes my understanding. We are told that "that part of a farmer's crop held for sale or for seed, or to feed his help, in part payment of wages, would be accounted capital; that held for the care of his family would not be".
But I fail to discover any ground of reason or authority for the doctrine that it is only when a crop is about to be sold or sown, or given as wages, that it may be called capital. On the contrary, whether we consider custom or reason, so much of it as is stored away in ricks and barns during harvest, and remains there to be used in any of these ways months or years afterwards, is customarily and rightly termed capital. Surely, the meaning of the clumsy phrase that capital is "wealth in the course of exchange" must be that it is "wealth capable of being exchanged" against labour or anything else. That, in fact, is the equivalent of the second definition, that capital is "that part of wealth which is devoted to the aid of production."
