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
Famous quotes containing the words aim of, aim and/or theory:
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The ability to secure an independent livelihood and honorable employ suited to her education and capacities is the only true foundation of the social elevation of woman, even in the very highest classes of society. While she continues to be educated only to be somebody’s wife, and is left without any aim in life till that somebody either in love, or in pity, or in selfish regard at last grants her the opportunity, she can never be truly independent.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“Many people have an oversimplified picture of bonding that could be called the “epoxy” theory of relationships...if you don’t get properly “glued” to your babies at exactly the right time, which only occurs very soon after birth, then you will have missed your chance.”
—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)