Note 182 — Chapter II · : ADAM SMITH

Ibid., chap. 6; vol. i, p. 51. Here, for example, is a passage in which, as Böhm-Bawerk forcibly remarks (Kapital und Kapitalzins, 2nd ed., 1900, p. 84), the two conceptions are found in juxtaposition without any attempt at reconciliation: “In this state of things [where labour and capital have already been appropriated] the whole produce of labour does not always belong to the labourer. He must in most cases share it with the owner of the stock which employs him. Neither is the quantity of labour commonly employed in acquiring or producing any commodity, the only circumstance which can regulate the quantity which it ought commonly to purchase, command, or exchange for. An additional quantity, it is evident, must be due for the profits of the stock which advanced the wages and furnished the materials of that labour.” At the beginning of the passage the workman shared the produce of his labour and profits constituted a deduction from the value created by labour alone; at the end of the paragraph profits issue from a supplementary value which is an addition to the value already given it by labour. Other passages where the two conceptions come into contact are also cited by Böhm-Bawerk. Interest and rent are also occasionally taken as evidence that the workman is being exploited, and this entitles Smith to be regarded as the father of socialism. More than one passage in his work seems to point to this conclusion. “In other countries, rent and profit eat up wages, and the two superior orders of people oppress the inferior one.” (Book IV, chap. 7, part ii; vol. ii, p. 67.) Concerning property he writes: “Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” (Book V, chap. 1, part ii; vol. ii, p. 207.) And finally there is the famous passage from the sixth chapter: “As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.… He [the workman] must then pay for the licence to gather them; and must give up to the landlord a portion of what his labour either collects or produces. This portion, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of this portion, constitutes the rent of land, and in the price of the greater part of commodities makes a third component part.” (Book I, chap. 6; vol. i, p. 51.) Dr. Cannan in his History of the Theories of Production and Distribution goes the length of declaring that the theory of spoliation is the only one in Smith’s work. It is to Smith that we owe that idea so frequently expressed by socialists, namely, that the workman in modern society never really obtains the produce of his toil.