ABSTRACT
In a characteristically imaginative article, Evsey Domar 1 developed a framework for assessing whether, in countries with lots of land, the labour force would be in servitude. He suggested that an aristocracy, abundant land and free labour could not simultaneously exist – only two of them. Actually he did not use the word “aristocracy” though it was not out of place for Russia, and even southern cotton plantation owners in early nineteenth century America would not have blushed at such a label. What Domar was driving at was that a landlord class could exist when land was scarce for then a rent could be charged to tenants. Such was, classically, eighteenth and nineteenth century England, with its aristocratic landlords receiving rents from tenant farmers who in their turn hired an agricultural wage labour force. If land was abundant as in nineteenth century North America and Russia, rents might be driven down to very low levels so that it might be difficult for a landlord class to survive: enserfment or enslavement of the people could then be highly profitable. Otherwise abundant land could allow the development of free yeoman farmers as in the mid and northern United States, without a landlord class. 2
