Aim of The Theory
In good part, Marx's theory is a critique of David Ricardo's Law of rent, and it examines with detailed numerical examples how the relative profitability of capital investments in agriculture is affected by the productivity, fertility, and location of farmland, as well as by capital expenditure on land improvements.
Marx aims to show that capitalism turns agriculture into a business like any other, operated for purely commercial motives; and that the ground rents appropriated by landowners are a burden for the industrial bourgeoisie both because they imply an additional production-cost and because they raise the prices of agricultural output.
The peculiarity of capitalism in agriculture is that commerce has to adapt to physical factors such as climate and soil quality, the relative inelasticity of agricultural supply, and the impact of bad harvests on international prices for farm products. Eventually, however, the production of farm products is completely reorganized according to the exchange-value of farm output – foodstuffs are then produced only according to their expected trading value in the market.
Read more about this topic: Differential And Absolute Ground Rent
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