Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/101

 predatory and sentimental followers, states that time is an element of production, but he goes on to contend that what is really involved are the “reproductive forces of nature.” These reproductive forces of nature, with Ricardo and others, he finally assigns to land, so that the logical effect of his argument is to make the interest paid for certain forms of capital a kind of super-rent for the land upon which effort was originally exerted. Like other high-minded but impatient crusaders, he invites a dubious following by the inducement of loot.

Charles Gide, also, acknowledged the factor of time and came almost in sight of Henry George as he was backing away. He states, “Time is one of the essential conditions of all production” and “man’s activity is limited by time as much as by space (sic). No act of production can be instantaneous. We shall see that this condition…far from being purely metaphysical has consequences which are of serious economic importance and of great practical interest.” This is very adequate support, but it is necessary to point out that where the word space is used as a limit of activity, what must be meant is measurable area: space limits nothing.

Apart from the discussion of the importance of time as a justification for interest, Gide discusses it earlier in a more abstract way. He acknowledges the factor in a couple of lines, saying, “We might also add (“that nature must furnish man”) with time, since time, as well as space, is a condition of our existence.”

He might have seized the elusive factor then, if he had not confused himself with a seeming parallel between space and time. Space parallels eternity, since space and eternity are the boundless theater of all our culture; but the two calculable