A Study on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth

Author: Duergo
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-01-01
Features: In this book, the author elaborates on 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 (non-productive class), and landowners. The author 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. The author not only reduces wages to the minimum subsistence requirements but also elaborates in detail on the reasons behind this.
Next, the author develops the theory of net product in the Physiocratic school. Although he mistakenly attributes the net product (the surplus of product value over its production costs) to nature's gift, he simultaneously emphasizes that it is the gift of land to agricultural labor. In reality, it is the result of labor utilizing natural productivity. Here, the "natural gifts" of agricultural products, as Marx pointed out, "secretly transform 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, the author correctly understood the surplus value created by surplus labor, though he interpreted it in terms of specific forms of labor.