ABSTRACT
The land’s absorption of the proletarians as tenants paying more than the economic rent stops. The main point to be grasped is, that however useful any commodity may be, its exchange value can be run down to nothing by increasing the supply until there is more of it than is wanted. The exchange-value of the coffin is counted as part of the national wealth; but a nation which cannot afford food and clothing for its children allowed to pass as wealthy because it has provided a pretty coffin for a dead dog. All economic analyses begin with the cultivation of the earth. To the mind’s eye of the astronomer the earth is a ball spinning in space without ulterior motives. To the bodily eye of the primitive cultivator it is a vast green plain, from which, by sticking a spade into it, wheat and other edible matters can be made to spring.
