5) Wakefield
Wakefield's real contribution to the understanding of capital has already been dealt with in the previous section on the Conversion of Surplus Value into Capital[106] Here we shall only deal with what is directly relevant to the "TOPIC".
* "Treating labour as a commodity, and capital, the produce of labour, as another, then, if the value of these two commodities were regulated by equal quantities of labour, a given amount of labour would, under all circumstances, exchange for that quantity of capital which had been produced by the same amount of labour; antecedent labour would always exchange for the same amount of present labour. But the value of labour, in relation to other commodities, in so far, at least, as wages depend upon share, is determined, not by equal quantities of labour, but by the proportion between supply and demand" * (Wakefield's edition of Smith's Wealth of Nations, VOL. I, London, 1835,[13] p[p. 230-]231, note).
Thus, according to Wakefield, profit would be inexplicable if wages corresponded to the value of labour.
In VOLUME II of his edition of Adam Smith's work Wakefield remarks:
* "Surplus produce I07 always constitutes rent: still rent may be paid, which does not consist of surplus produce"* (I.e., [p.] 216).
"If, as in Ireland, * the bulk of a people be brought to live upon potatoes, and in hovels and rags, and to pay, for permission so to live, all [that] they can produce beyond hovels, rags, and potatoes, then, in proportion as they put up with less, the owner of the land on which they live, obtains more, even though the return to capital or labour should remain unaltered. What the miserable tenants give up, the landlord gathers. So a fall in the standard of living amongst the cultivators of the earth is another cause of surplus produce... When wages fall, the effect upon surplus produce is the same as a fall in the standard of living; the whole produce remaining the same, the surplus part is greater; the producers have less, and the landlord more"* ([pp.] 220-21).
In this case, profit is called rent, just as it is called interest when, for example, as in India, the worker (although nominally independent) works with advances he receives from the capitalist and has to hand over all the SURPLUS PRODUCE to the capitalist.
Endnotes
[106] In October 1862, when notebook XIV of the manuscript was written, the section on the "Conversion of Surplus Value into Capital" had not yet materialised. On Wakefield's merits, see present edition, Vol. 30, pp. 256-57.—371
[13] Marx has 1836. It is still not known whether an 1836 edition actually existed. The quotation has been checked with the 1835 edition. Cf. this volume, p. 371.—35, 371, 388