Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/184

 arbitrary reasons will suffice to prove the inexatitude of a land valuation based on rent.

On the other hand rent cannot be a constant indication of the degree of fertility of any land, since the modern application of chemistry constantly changes the nature of the soil, while it is only in recent years that geological knowledge has begun to destroy all the old estimate of relative fertility. It is only about twenty years ago that vast areas in the eastern countries of England were brought into cultivation, they had been left uncultivated for want of appreciating correctly the relations between the nature of the upper soil and of the lower stratum.

Thus history, so far from giving, in rent, a valuation completely formed, simply changes, completely reverses, the valuations already formed.

In fine, fertility is not so much a natural quality as might reasonably be supposed, but is intimately related to existing social conditions. A soil may be very fertile for the raising of corn, yet, nevertheless, the state of the market may induce the cultivator to turn it into an artificial prairie and thus render it barren. M. Proudhon has improvised his valuation, which is not even worth the ordinary valuation, simply in order to give a corporeal form to the providentially equalitarian object of rent.

"Rent," continues M. Proudhon, "is the interest paid for a capital which never perishes, namely land. And as this capital is not susceptible of any increase as to its material but only to an indefinite improvement in its use, it results that, while the interest or profit on a loan (mutuum) tends to constantly diminish in consequence of the abundance of capital, rent tends to constantly increase by the perfection of the industry from