A Study on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth

Author: [French] Du Guo, Department of Economic Thought, School of Economics, Nankai University
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1997-08-01
Features: Du Guo's most important economic work is the book On the Formation and Distribution of Wealth. In this book, he develops the fundamental principles of Physiocracy. After narrating the origins of commerce, he argues for Quesnay's view that agriculture is the sole source of wealth. Quesnay divides society into the agricultural class (productive class), the industrial class (unproductive class), and landowners. Du Guo further supplements this by distinguishing between capitalists and wage laborers within the agricultural and industrial classes. He extends the principle of free competition to the relationship between laborers and entrepreneurs, thereby providing the most comprehensive wage theory of the time. Du Guo not only reduces wages to the minimum subsistence requirements but also elaborates in detail the reasons why this is the case.
Next, Du Guo develops the theory of net product of the Physiocratic school. Although he mistakenly attributes the net product (the surplus value of a product over its production costs) to nature's gift, he simultaneously emphasizes that it is the land that bestows this gift upon agricultural labor, which in reality is the result of labor utilizing natural productivity. Here, the "gift of nature" he refers to, as Marx pointed out, "secretly transforms into the surplus labor of agricultural workers." In the case where land is separated from laborers, it is appropriated by landowners without compensation. From this, it can be seen that within the realm of agriculture, Du Guo correctly understood the surplus value created by surplus labor, though he interpreted it in terms of specific forms of labor.