Michael Neocosmos, Marx's Third Class - Capitalist Landed Property and Capitalist Development

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Marx's third class: Capitalist

landed property and
capitalist development
a
Michael Neocosmos
a
Research Fellow, c/o The Journal of Peasant
Studies, Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.,
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Marx's Third Class: Capitalist Landed
Property and Capitalist Development
Michael Neocosmos*
This article consists of a detailed discussion of Marx's theorisation of

a landed class in the capitalist mode of production. It is argued that
Marx does not consider landlords as feudal leftovers but does indeed
succeed in providing a sophisticated theory of capitalist landed prop-

erty as an independent class, which conforms in all major respects
with his theorisation of capital and wage-labour. Moreover, the role
of landed property in the process of capitalist development of relative
surplus-value extraction is analysed. It is argued that it is possible to
speak of different forms of capitalist relations according to whether
landed property or capital provides the leading force behind the
development process. Capitalist development is then shown to be the
outcome of a class struggle between landed property, capital and
wage-labour. This process is briefly illustrated with reference to
England in the 1840s and Latin America in the 1960s.
Here, then, we have all three classes - wage-labourers, industrial

capitalists, and landowners, constituting together, and in their
mutual opposition, the framework of modern society.
[Marx, 1865: 618]
I. INTRODUCTION
Two interrelated sets of problems inform this article. First, the seemingly
contradictory position of landlords in Marxist theoretical discourse; and
second, the role of agriculture, and in particular that of landed class, in the
process of capitalist development.
In the conceptual apparatus of Historical Materialism's analysis of the
capitalist mode of production, based as it is on the dyadic opposition
between capital and wage-labour, landowners constitute an oddity. They
are an oddity for three main reasons which all result from Marx's persistence
in referring to this category, in Capital as well as in his other major scientific
* Research Fellow, c/o The Journal of Peasant Studies, Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. This article is a
revised version of a paper first submitted to the British Sociological Association Annual
Conference at Aberystwyth in April 1981 under a slightly different title. It also appears in a
different form and with detailed references in my Ph.D. Thesis [Neocosmos, 1982]. I am grateful
to T. Byres for editorial advice.
6 The Journal of Peasant Studies
works, as a class on a par with wage-labour and capital. This is exemplified
by the quotation at the head of this article.
The first problem arises immediately in connection with a position which
has traditionally seen classes as opposing 'poles of antagonistic production
relations' [Laclau, 1977: 159]. If classes are conceptualised as polar oppo-
sites it is of course impossible to have more than two classes in any mode of
production. The second problem is related to the conditions of existence of
such a class. The fact that landowners seem to be constituted as a class
merely through a legal relation of landownership, does seem prima facie to
contradict the economic basis of class theorisation. This is the case particu-
larly as recent Marxist theory has correctly stressed the view that economic
ownership and control, rather than legal ownership is to be taken as the basis
of class identification.
The reaction of recent writers to these questions has been to assert either
explicitly or implicitly that Marx's use of the term 'class' with reference to
landowners cannot be taken too seriously and that landlords are best seen as
constituting a 'fraction' of capital. In this context Poulantzas, for example,
has at least the merit of explicitly asserting that Marx is wrong in referring to
landowners as a class and that one should refer to them as a fraction
[Poulantzas, 1973: 73, 231]. More often than not, however, recent writers
have merely assumed, without discussion, that the only form in which
landowners may exist is in that of a fraction of capital [e.g., Massey and
Catalano: 1978]. Indeed, this formulation does seem to avoid the two
problems stated above. The conceptualisation of classes as polar opposites is
no longer contradicted and, if one holds to a conception of 'levels', a legal
relation may be seen as a sufficient condition of existence of a fraction.
Unfortunately, as soon as one adopts this conceptualisation, a third
problem arises which can be most readily grasped with reference to numer-
ous statements by Marx and Lenin. It is reasonably well known that Marx
suggests on many occasions that landlords in the capitalist mode of produc-
tion, due to their extraction of part of surplus-value in the form of rent,
constitute an obstacle to the penetration of capital in agriculture and to the
accumulation of capital. Hence, Marx suggests, capital will attempt to
abolish landed property in order to remove this obstacle. Although Marx
theorises many other fractions in Capital (merchant's capital, interest-
bearing capital, etc.), nowhere does he suggest that any of these fractions is
constituted in antagonism to capital. On the contrary, as I shall later suggest,
Marx argues that these fractions are all part of the same capital and that no
general pressure towards their abolition exists. If we agree with Marx and
Lenin that a pressure towards the removal by capital of the obstacles
constituted by landed property is a necessary structural feature of the
capitalist mode of production, it becomes nonsensical to visualise landlords
as a fraction of capital. This is because the concept of fraction presupposes
the unity of capital. The antagonisms which exist between fractions of capital
are not of the same order as that between wage-labour and capital. To say
that landlords constitue a fraction of capital is to assert that they form a
Marx's Third Class 7
constituent part of the unity of capital. To say that a structural antagonism
exists between capital and landed property is to deny that unity. This point is
of course only valid if the antagonism between landed property and capital
stressed by Marx, and later Lenin, is not conjunctural, not 'accidental' as
Marx would put it. It is only valid if it pertains to capitalism in general, in a
similar fashion to the manner in which the structural antagonism between
wage-labour and capital pertains to capitalism in general.
To say, however, that such a structural antagonism exists, presupposes
that the conditions of existence of a class of landlords are indeed theorised in
Marx's work. This is of course not obvious and it may be that Marx merely
considers landowners as leftovers from a bygone feudal age; that he merely
accounts for their existence in an accidental 'historical' sense [Tribe, 1977] or
that the problems I have discussed are the unfortunate result of the unques-
tioning incorporation into Historical Materialism of the 'three classes' of
Classical Political Economy.
If this is indeed the case, and if, in addition, no theorisation of a landlord
class is possible given the precepts of Marxism, it then becomes much more
difficult to explain in more than accidental terms the important role played
by landowners in the development of capitalism. In many contemporary
imperialised social formations the crucial element of the dominant power
bloc often seems to be an alliance between landowners and imperialism. In
some social formations, particularly in Africa and Asia, what Lenin called
the 'peasant road' to the capitalist development of agriculture might be said
to be dominant, but in others, for instance in Latin America, the capitalist
development of agriculture has largely been taking place under the aegis of
landlord control - what Lenin referred to as the 'Prussian' or 'Junker' road to
capitalist development. The failure of redistributive land reforms in Latin
America to make more than a small dent in the landowner/imperialism
power bloc has not automatically led to greater underdevelopment but to a
particular form of capitalist development where right-wing, military dicta-
torships have been presiding over impressive growth rates (Brazil, Argen-
tina, Chile, for example). The dominance of landlords over rapidly capitalis-
ing agricultures cannot simply be attributed to the presence of a 'restraining'
feudal mode with which capitalism is articulated, an argument beloved of
recent 'articulationist' positions. In such social formations agricultural
capital is not becoming less powerful. It is not losing its power to industrial
capital but is often dominating the power bloc along with financial and
imperialist interests. Hence in this situation it is not feudalism but capital-
ism, albeit of a different kind from the capitalism found in Western Europe,
which is to be confronted, to paraphrase Gunder Frank who, at least on this
point, was not far off the mark. It seems that the road to capitalist develop-
ment we have been witnessing in such social formations requires for its
adequate analysis, a theory of capitalist landed property. Such a theory
should enable us to posit the questions of class struggles and alliances as the
primary unit of analysis.
Of course one can only give a detailed picture of the development of
capitalism in specific social formations by a detailed analysis of such factors
in each individual case, a project which is far beyond the scope of this article.
What may be possible, however, is to trace several features of the different
roads to the general development of capitalism, with particular reference to
the role played by landowners in such transformations - an outline which
may then facilitate the investigation of concrete situations. This approach
should have the added advantage of avoiding both a purely accidental
account of a general problem without collapsing into a deterministic
explanation of capitalist development and underdevelopment which is often
provided by many current writings with references to the 'demands' of the
international market or the 'reproductive needs' of capitalism in the West.
Moreover, Lenin's conceptualisation of different 'roads' was not designed
either as a simple description or even as a theorisation of 'agrarian change'

within the Russian social formation, but was crucially developed to elucidate
the different forms of capitalist social relations which the leadership (domi-
nance or hegemony) of different classes was actually producing and which
the proletariat and its party had to confront in their struggles and practice.
The different economic, political and ideological relations which were the
outcome of the leadership of landed property or that of the rich peasantry in
the process of capitalist development (the development of an industrial
labour process based on free wage-labour or that of large latifundia founded
on feudal-like oppressive forms of labour control, a bourgeois-democratic
political system or various kinds of compromise between such a system and
autocracy, etc.) would make a crucial difference to the demarcation of a class
of proletarians, in an economic, political and ideological sense, and hence to
the future of a socialist transformation [Lenin, 1907a, 1905]. Thus for Lenin
this question was a centrally political one, as different forms of capitalist
relations engendered by different balances of class forces, and the lead-
ership by different classes of the process of capitalist development, held
different consequences for the kinds of proletarian struggle within the
Russian social formation, a point which Menshevik economism could not
possible correctly comprehend [Gibbon, 1984].
The approach utilised in this article makes possible the posing of the
crucial question of the general existence of different forms of bourgeois
[agrarian] transformation, which provides the way to overcome both the
problems of a crude economism and its mirror image of a tempting but
vacuous relativism. What follows is an attempt to take seriously Marx's
references to landowners under capitalism as forming a class. In order to
avoid misunderstanding, let me stress at this point that what is attempted
here is a preliminary investigation of the conditions of existence of a class of
landlords in the capitalist mode of production. Hence I will be primarily
concerned with abstract theory and not with any social formation in particu-
lar. Abstract concepts, however, are not necessarily ahistorical and I shall
also be examining the transition to, and the development of, the capitalist
mode of production in general. It will be argued in what follows that there is
indeed evidence to suggest that a rigorous and coherent theorisation of a
class of landlords is present in Marx's political economy [primarily in
Capital]. In order to do this, my main object of investigation must be
capitalist production relations as these are what underlie the formation of
classes in Marxism. The remainder of the text will therefore be concerned
with an examination of the nature of production relations under capitalism
and will attempt to situate landowners therein. First, I shall examine the
process Marx refers to as the so-called 'primitive accumulation'; the histor-
ical development of capitalism and its implications for agriculture and the
importance of the struggle between capital and landed property will be
introduced. Second, I shall turn to a more structural analysis of the basis of a
landlord class under capitalism. Capitalist landed property and the deter-
minate (within limits) nature of the basis of the landlords' revenue will be
examined. Third, I shall point briefly to the distinctions which Marx draws
between landowners and other fractions of capital and show that the possi-
bility of landlords constituting a fraction is accounted for through the strug-
gle between capital and landed property. Finally, I shall return to a historical
account, and the role which this struggle fulfils in the development of
relative surplus-value extraction under capitalism will be outlined.
II. PRODUCTION RELATIONS, LANDED PROPERTY AND CAPITALIST AGRI-

CULTURE
Before initiating the discussion proper, it is necessary, in order to clarify
what follows, to draw attention to a fundamental conceptual distinction on
which the text of Capital is founded. I am referring here to the distinction
between the directly experienced phenomenal entities of lived relations
under capitalism, and the historical relations or contradictions which pro-
duce such phenomena. Marx refers to the former as 'phenomenal forms' and
to the latter as 'essential relations'. Essential relations refer primarily to the
wage-labour/capital relation which, as Sayer [1979] shows, explains why
phenomena under capitalism take the forms they do. The categories of
essential relations can be referred to as 'essential categories', while those of
phenomenal forms are 'phenomenal categories'. The latter include the
categories of phenomena such as wages, prices, profits, classes, the state and
so on, while the former include those of value, surplus-value, capital,
wage-labour, landed property and so on. Essential categories are utilised by
Marx in Capital in order to account for the existence of the phenomena of
capitalism which are produced by essential relations [e.g. Marx, 1867:
Ch.19, 1865: Part 1].
There is no need to dwell on this question at length as more detailed
discussions can be found elsewhere [Sayer, 1979; Neocosmos, 1982].
Rather, it is only important to stress a number of points which are of
relevance to the argument which follows. First, it is important to note that
Marx distinguishes explicitly between classes (proletariat, bourgeoisie,
landowners) from the 'elements on which they rest' or the bases of these
classes in essential relations: wage-labour, capital, landed property [Marx,
1857: 100, 108]. At the same time he distinguishes between the revenues of
these classes (for example, wages and gross profit) and their bases (for
example, variable capital and surplus-value). The importance of such cate-
gories as wage-labour, capital and landed property is, in the present context,
that they explain the possible existence of classes in specific capitalist social
formations.' These categories cannot therefore be conflated with class cate-
gories without invalidating the structure of Marx's argument. For the same
reasons neither can the bases of these classes' revenues be conflated with
their revenues themselves. Marx is not concerned in Capital with wage-
labourers, capitalists or landowners as such, because these are collectivities,
the existence of which can only make sense within specific societies.
Second, it should also be stressed that Capital is not concerned with
accounting for the existence of material 'things' such as 'labour', 'capital'

and 'land', the ownership of which would somehow explain the existence of
the collectivities of labourers, capitalists and landowners. Such a form of
reasoning is not only incapable of explaining class unities (as opposed to a
mere addition of individuals) but is akin to the 'factors of production'
analysis of vulgar economics which can only account for classes in terms of
relations of distribution given by nature. The point is that these relations of
distribution also need to be explained, and they need to be explained in
terms other than by reference to a supposed 'natural order of things' [Marx,
1865: Ch.47, 1863c: addenda].
Finally, and more generally, it should perhaps also be noted that the
relationship between phenomenal forms and essential relations briefly
sketched above is in no way 'essentialist'. This is because the former are not
'expressions' of the latter and because the latter do not exist independently
of the former. As such the production of phenomenal forms by essential
relations must be explained. Although classes of wage-labourers and capi-
talists may exist in social formations as effects of the capital/wage-labour
relation, this exploitative relation is not apparent in them. On the contrary,
as Marx shows in detail, what is apparent in them is an external relation of
more or less equal exchange between more or less equal owners of 'labour'
and 'capital'. In the sense used here the essential categories of capital,
wage-labour and landed property, what I have referred to as constituting the
bases of classes in capitalism, must be therefore considered as 'sites' or
'places', rather than whole empirical entities [Hall, 1977: 54-5].
In this sense Capital explains the conditions of existence of classes in
capitalism. It does not tell us whether or not these classes will exist in a given
social formation at a particular time in history, nor does it tell us, if such
classes were found to exist, who these classes are. This can only be the
product of renewed investigation. The foregoing arguments, despite their
brevity and abstractness are of extreme importance for the text which
follows because it is my contention that only they can make possible a
coherent understanding of Marx's general theory of class in Capital and
hence his theorisation of a landowning class including his theory of rent.2
Moreover, the distinction between essential relations and phenomenal
forms opens up the possibility of the existence of a variety of capitalist forms
which can be accounted for in other ways than as simple deviations from an
ideal capitalism. The role which this conceptualisation plays in Lenin's work
has already been noted, but it is important in this context to remark also on
the inability of 'articulationism' to pose this kind of question as, for this
approach, major differences of form within social formations can only be
accounted for with reference to the articulation of different (usually pre-
capitalist) modes of production with an ideal capitalist mode. This has had
the effect of indefensibly restricting investigations a priori, making it
impossible to discover what may be different and important capitalist forms,
by relegating these a priori to the status of 'pre-capitalist leftovers', which
are then said to be 'reproduced' for various reasons and in various ways by
capital [Neocosmos, 1982: Ch.7].
The Historical Development of Capitalist Landed Property

This article is concerned primarily with a discussion of the historical specific-
ity of what Marx terms 'landed property' in the capitalist mode of produc-
tion. Initially what needs to be established is that Marx does indeed develop
a concept of a specifically capitalist form of landed property and the major
characteristics of this social form.
The first difficulty to arise in this context is that Marx makes several
statements which seem to indicate that landed property predates capitalism
[e.g., Marx, 1863b: 243] with the result that it could easily be inferred, as
indeed it has been [e.g., Rey, 1973; Tribe, 1977], that he merely considers
landed property and landowners as feudal leftovers. In this case a class of
landlords could only be comprehended as an accidental occurrence rather
than an integral component of the capitalist mode of production. Marx's
remarks however are not restricted to such statements and two important
points need to be made on this question.
First, Marx notes explicitly that no general conception of property inde-
pendent of historically specific social relations can be maintained without an
adherence to a supra-historical (and hence immutable) notion of 'society in
general'.
In each historical epoch, property has developed differently and under
a set of entirely different social relations.... To try to give a definition
of property as of an independent relation, a category apart, an abstract
and eternal idea, can be nothing but an illusion of metaphysics or
jurisprudence [1847: 197].
Moreover, of course, this is no mere assertion on Marx's part, for the whole
of his theorisation of the capitalist mode of social production is founded
precisely on a conception of the historical specificity of all its social relations
[Sayer, 1979; Neocosmos, 1982]. Hence there is no 'property in general',
only feudal property, capitalist property and so on. This argument applies a
fortiori to landed property.
Second, to suggest that a phenomenon historically precedes capitalism is
not to suggest that it cannot be theorised as constituting an integral part of
the capitalist mode of production. Let us take commodity production, for
example: Marx makes it quite clear that the production of commodities
pre-dates capitalism. Nevertheless, commodity production and reproduc-
tion are theorised as perhaps the fundamental element of the capitalist mode
of production. The comparison I have drawn between landed property - and
more generally, private property - and commodity production, is not for-
tuitous. The historical development of private property and the develop-
ment of commodity production are intimately related. Indeed, Marx expli-
citly suggests that private property is a necessary condition of commodity

production and exchange, as exchange transactions necessitate some proof
of ownership [1867: 88]. He also makes it clear with regard to land that the
'legal view of the free private ownership of land, arises ... in the modern
world only with the development of capitalist production' [1865: 616]. The
development of land as a commodity with its correlate of private ownership
is thus intimately related to the historical development of commodity pro-
duction. What have to be ascertained, therefore, are the specific characteris-
tics of this capitalist form of landed property, as well as its historical genesis.
In order to provide a preliminary account of the first issue and a fuller
account of the second, let me turn to a discussion of the genesis of capitalism:
the so-called 'primitive accumulation'.
In the famous Part VIII of the first volume of Capital, Marx discusses the
historical genesis of the relation between capital and wage-labour. This
process is phenomenally illustrated by the separation of the direct producers
from their means of subsistence and production in Britain from the sixteenth
century onwards. It is this process which transforms 'on the one hand, the
social means of subsistence and of production into capital [and] on the other,
the immediate producers into wage-labourers' [1867: 668]. Although this
process has been the subject of much discussion and debate, it is less often
noted that, as in Western Europe wage labourers emanated from agriculture
via an expropriation of the peasantry, this same process implied a drastic
reorganisation of rural social relations and, in particular, the creation of a
new capitalist form of landed property. Land itself being an important
means of production, the separation of labour from production characteris-
tic of the capitalist mode of production implies not only 'the transformation
of these conditions of labour into capital', but also 'in turn the expropriation
of the direct producers from the land, and thus a definite form of landed
property' [1865: 879]. Thus the existence of wage-labour 'presupposes land
in the form of landed property and the product in the form of capital' [1863c:
480]. Landed property, and wage-labour are, therefore, like capital, 'histor-
ically determined social forms; one of labour, the other of monopolised
terrestrial globe, and indeed both forms corresponding to capital and
belonging to the same economic formation of society' [1865: 816]. In the
Grundrisse, Marx goes so far as to assert that 'Capital is the creator of
modern landed property' [1858: 276].
The argument we are confronted with here is quite clear. To suggest that
landed property pre-dates capitalism is not to maintain that the capitalist
mode of production merely arises on the basis of a pre-capitalist form of
property without in any way altering that form. On the contrary, because of
its creation of a class of free wage-labourers, developing capitalism, as part
of the same process, necessarily transforms the old form of landed property
into a specially capitalist form of landed property. Hence what constitutes
the basis of the 'land question' under capitalism is not some general notion of
'private landownership' existing in both feudal and capitalist society, but
rather 'private landownership, and thereby expropriation by the direct
procedures from the land - private landownership by the one, which implies
lack of ownership by the others - is the basis of the capitalist mode of
production' [1865: 812; see also 1865: 614]. Such a situation amounts to 'a
total restructuring of the mode of production [agriculture] itself [1858: 277].
What therefore are the characteristics of this specifically capitalist form of
landed property to which Marx refers as 'modern landed property'? Marx
notes initially that modern landed property is divorced from the 'relations of
dominion and servitude' characteristic of feudalism and that it 'discards all
its former political and social embellishments and associations' thereby
enabling 'the conscious scientific application of agronomy' to agricultural
production [1865: 617-18]. This divesting by modern landed property of its
erstwhile feudal relations hints at what constitutes its most fundamental
characteristic: its separation from both wage-labour and capital. Landed
property becomes separated from labour through the process of creation of
wage-labour itself — that is, the expropriation of the peasantry - but it also
becomes separated from capital via its separation from production itself.
The landlord is transformed from being 'the manager and master of the
process of production and of the entire process of social life to the position of
mere lessor of land, usurer in land and mere collector of rent' [1865: 883].
The capitalist mode of production in agriculture therefore implies the
separation of the functions of land ownership from those of production.
Marx argues that the development of this mode of production in agriculture
'separates land as an instrument of production from landed property and
landowner' so thoroughly that 'the landowner may spend his whole life in
Constantinople, while his estates lie in Scotland' [1865: 618]. The capitalist
transformation of agriculture - as far as production is concerned - is there-
fore characterised by the separation of landed property from any control of
the means of production including land. Such control is now vested in the
hands of a capitalist farmer who, like any other capitalist, employs wage-
labour to produce commodities [1865: 615, 618]. The specific character of
capitalist landed property is one where 'ownership' is reduced and restricted to
an institution of mere juridical tenure. This is not the case in pre-capitalist
modes of production. It is important to bear in mind, although I shall have
occasion to return to this below, that landownership (like the ownership of
means of production) refers solely to a phenomenal juridical relation and

should not be conflated with landed property which (like capital) refers to
the essential relation which accounts for its existence [1865: 1814-16].
The separation between landed property and capital has very definite
consequences. Because landed property is divorced from the productive
process, rent - the basis of landlord revenue - is no longer extracted directly
from the immediate producers as under pre-capitalist modes of production.
It is now extracted from the capitalist farmer who 'pays the landowner, the
owner of the land exploited by him, a sum of money at definite periods fixed
by contract, for instance annually ... for the right to invest his capital in this
specific sphere of production' [1865: 618]. Capitalist ground-rent has in
common with pre-capitalist forms of rent the fact that it is 'the product of
surplus labour' but its specific difference consists in the fact that it 'is always
surplus over and above profit' [1865:634]. Hence 'the income of the landlord
may be called rent, even under other forms of society. But it differs essen-
tially from rent as it appears in this [capitalist] mode of production' [1865:
883]. Landed property is therefore not a thing or a mere institutional form
for Marx, but an antagonistic social reation which is founded on rent
extraction. Moreover, Marx argues further that this purely capitalist rela-
tion comes to constitute a structural obstacle to the penetration of capital
itself into agriculture and to general capital accumulation [1865: 639].
Capital creates modern landed property by separating itself from the
latter; but in this very act of separation lies the fact that landed property
acquires the ability to appropriate part of surplus-value in the form of rent.
As if this were not enough, this ability increases with the development of
capitalism, thus posing an increasingly important obstacle in the path of
capital investment in agriculture and making landed property appear 'super-
fluous and harmful... even from the point of view of the capitalist mode of
production' [1865: 622]. In sum, Marx argues, we are now in the presence of
three classes 'wage-labourers, industrial capitalist and landowners constitut-
ing together, and in their mutual opposition, the framework of modern
society' [1865: 618].
I shall examine the mechanisms of the creation and extraction of rent
below; two points however must be reiterated here. First, it is the separation
of the functions of land 'ownership' and production which structurally
constitute the relation of capitalist landed property and hence the basis for
landownership (and a class of landowners) under capitalism. This separation
parallels that between labour and production which constitutes the existence
of capital and wage-labour in an antagonistic relation. The former separa-
tion makes possible and is reproduced (as we shall see) by the extraction of
rent; the latter, of course, is what makes possible the extraction of surplus-
value which itself in turn reproduces the separation on an extending scale
[1867: 668]. As a consequence, and this is the second point, it is capitalism
itself which as a result of the production of landed property (or rent)
relation, gives rise to an obstacle to its own development. Landed property
constitutes an obstacle to capitalist accumulation and development not
because of its supposedly pre-capitalist nature, but because of its capitalist
nature. Capital itself creates this contradiction.
The Basis of Revenue and the Determination of Revenue
As I have already stressed, capital, wage-labour and landed property are
visualised by Marx as constituting the bases of the three classes of capitalist
society. Before landed property can be discussed in this context it is neces-
sary to discuss Marx's theorisation of capital and wage-labour in order to
ascertain his general conceptualisation.of such class 'places'. It will then be
possible to ascertain whether landed property does indeed fit into this
theorisation.
I shall be concerned here to establish two major points. It should be noted,

first of all, that the concept of class implies a unity which exists beyond the
individuals who compose it. Although such a unity need not exist in any
social formation,3 it is imperative that the basis of such a unity be theorised,
for in its absence there would be nothing to suggest the possible existence of
classes other than historical accident. Moreover, of course, these class
'places' must be theorised as constituents of antagonistic relations. Part of
the manner in which such entities are theorised by Marx is, I hope to show,
via a theorisation of the determinate (within limits) nature of class revenues.
Second, such limits which delineate these class 'places' must be structurally
determined — in other words, they must exist beyond the revenue receivers'
will. Such structural determination should be provided by the essential
relations of capitalism themselves. This last point is particularly important,
for even though it is rare to hear assertions to the effect that capitalists create
profit or interest as a simple act of will, many 'Marxists' have claimed as
much for landlords. It is often suggested, for example, that landlords can
manipulate their supposed 'monopoly in land' in order wilfully to create
their own revenue and hence reproduce their own conditions of existence.4
As Marx was the first to note in relation to Proudhon, this argument is,
among other things, purely tautological, as it attempts to explain landed
property with reference to the landed proprietor: 'He [Proudhon] makes use
of the intervention of the proprietor to explain property, of the rent receiver
to explain rent. He answers the problem by formulating the same problem
and adding an extra syllable' [1847: 199].
Towards the end of Capital Volume Three, Marx defines the capitalist
mode of production in terms of two fundamental characteristics: generalised
commodity production, which implies primarily that labour-power is a
commodity, and the systematic production of surplus-value [1865: 879-80].
Both these features he notes are only possible on the basis of the antagonistic
essential relation between capital and wage-labour so that 'the relation
between capital and wage-labour determines the entire character of this
mode of production' [1865: 880]. A detailed analysis of how capitalism
reproduces itself on the basis of this relation is of course not possible within
the confines of this article. A few brief comments will have to suffice.
The relations between wage-labour and capital are what condition the
production of capital (commodities), as products only become transformed
into capital through the production of surplus-value. Thus the production
and reproduction of capital only takes place within a relation of exploitation
whereby part of the labour expended in the labour process is provided gratis
to the capitalist (surplus labour). But exploitation takes place only because
labour take the form of wage-labour; in other words, because the labourer is
separated from the conditions of production and is thus obliged to sell his
labour-power on the market [1863c: 271-2]. It is only because labour takes
the form of wage-labour that surplus-value is produced. This unpaid form of
surplus-labour is realised by the capitalist on the market and new means of
production and labour-power are purchased in order continuously to repro-
duce capital. But the reproduction of capital presupposes the reproduction

of labour as wage labour. Hence the reproduction of capital reproduces not
only products in the form of commodities, not only surplus-value, but at the
same time wage-labour, capital and the relation between them: 'on the one
side the capitalist, on the other the wage-labourer' [1867: 542].
However, due to the fact that labour under capitalism takes the form of
wage-labour, the value of labour power (or variable capital) takes the form
of (or is transformed into) wages [1867: Ch.19]. The value of labour-power
refers to the cost of reproducing the labourer, but as it takes the form of
wages (or the 'price of labour') it really seems that the wage is a payment for
all labour (necessary and surplus-labour). 'The wage form thus extinguishes
every trace of the division of the working-day into necessary labour and
surplus labour, into paid and unpaid labour' [1867:505]. Moreover, because
variable capital takes the form of wages and all labour appears as paid
labour, surplus-value assumes the 'transmuted form of profit' [1865:37]. As
labour-power and labour appear as confused and as the existence of unpaid
labour is not apparent, there is phenomenally no difference between vari-
able and constant capital. The result is that the value of the produced
commodity is equated with its cost to the capitalist - its cost-price (c + v) -
and that surplus-value in the form of profit seems to emerge from the
aggregate advanced capital rather than from its variable part alone [1865:
Ch.l].
The importance of the categories of variable capital (the value of labour-
power) and surplus-value is that they explain the existence of wages and
profit.5 Variable capital and surplus-value are essential relations which take
the phenomenal forms of wages and profit respectively. However, at the
same time and because of this, variable capital and surplus-value also
constitute the limiting bases of the revenues of a class of wage-labourers and
of a class of capitalists.6
Now, a systematic evaluation of Marx's theory of revenues would require
a discussion of his concept of the total social capital and the transformation
of values into prices of production, for when he comes to consider what he
calls the 'transmuted forms' of surplus-value — profit, interest and rent - he
drops the assumption that commodities sell at their values. Nevertheless
such an enterprise is not strictly necessary in the context of the present
discussion, for I only wish to concentrate on two main points: first, that
variable capital and surplus-value impose limits on the magnitude of wages
and profits and second, that these limits are imposed independently of the
will of the revenue receivers. Indeed Marx himself argues that the derivation
of prices of production from values 'abolishes neither the determination of
prices by values nor the regular limits of profit'. What the transformation of
values of production into prices does is to alter the distribution of profit
'among the various particular capitals which make up the social capital, i.e. it
distributes it uniformly among them in the proportion in which they form
parts of the value of this total capital' [1865: 860]. In order to facilitate
exposition, it is not my intention to discuss either interest-bearing capital or
profit of enterprises, but to concentrate on gross profit, hence this distinc-

tion can be ignored for the moment.
The value of labour-power is determined by the labour time socially
necessary to produce the labourer's means of subsistence. Although for
Marx subsistence implies a physiological lower limit, it is nevertheless a
historically determined magnitude which varies not only 'according to the
climatic and other physical conditions' of the country but also depends 'to a
great extent on the degree of civilisation of a country, more particularly on
the conditions under which, and consequently on the habits and degree of
comfort in which, the class of free labourers has been formed' [1867: 168].
The level of wages must be sufficient therefore to reproduce the labourer at
this historiclaly determined level. There is also an absolute physiological
upper limit to the length of the working day, 'the total quantity of daily
labour-time during which the labourer can, in general, be active and still
preserve and reproduce his labour power' [1865: 859], which is also lowered
in accordance with historical conditions.
In consequence Marx says 'the value of all other revenue thus has its limit.
It is always equal to the value in which the total working day ... is incorpo-
rated minus the portion of the working day incorporated in wages.' The limit
of profit then is 'determined by the limit of the value in which the unpaid
labour is expressed, that is by the quantity of this unpaid labour' [loc. cit.].
Of course the magnitude of surplus-value and variable capital, dependent as
they are on the capital/wage-labour relation, can be altered by class-
struggle. The levels of wages and profits are also altered by class struggle.
The important point, however, is that these levels are not the product of the
wills of these classes considered independently. The capitalist class cannot
create its own revenue; neither can the wage-labourers. This is because their
revenues are the product of a relation: the relation between wage-labour and
capital. Individual capitalists or individual wage-labourers can, of course,
receive revenues above the limits imposed by the general levels of surplus-
value or the value of labour power. If we take the example of the capitalist,
for instance, the price at which he sells his commodity is limited on the one
hand by the cost price (c + v) and on the other by the value of the commodity
(c + v + s). He can indeed sell his commodity below its cost price but would
then not be making a profit; and he can sell his commodity above its value, as
in the case of a monopoly price .But the monopoly price of certain commod-
ities
would merely transfer a portion of the profit of the other commodity-
producers to the commodities having the monopoly price. A local
disturbance in the distribution of the surplus-value among the various
spheres of production would indirectly take place, but it would leave
the limit of this surplus value itself unaltered [1865: 861].
In addition, of course, the individual capitalist is totally capable of utilis-
ing his 'business acumen' in realising his profit on the market in order to
obtain the best possible return on his investment. Hence individual profits
deviate from surplus-values, and revenues themselves, as opposed to their
bases, depend partly on the business acumen of the receiver. Nevertheless,
classes do not create their own revenues. The existence of these revenues is
only explicable in terms of class relations.
The importance of imposing a conception of limits on the revenue of a
particular class rests, not so much in imposing abstract boundaries on what
might seem to be an 'unpredictable' reality, but more on the fact that one can
thereby theorise an otherwise accidental unity. Without a concept of limits it
becomes impossible to explain why the revenues of the individuals compos-
ing a class find their origin in one specific portion of the product of labour. In
other words it becomes impossible to theorise a unity. Indeed any theory of
class needs to explain the existence of this unity of individuals independently
of the individuals which compose it, if their unity is to be more than a
fortuitous accident. What Marx's concept of limits does therefore is to
enable him to theorise this unity, this 'place'. In addition this unity must be
accounted for independently of any 'collective will' on the part of the class in
question, for not to do so would simply constitute a collapse into voluntaris-
tic idealism with all its attendant problems.
The centrality and crucial importance of a conception of limits in Marx's
theorisation of class can now readily be appreciated. Such a theorisation, it
should be noted, is not strictly concerned with the phenomenal groupings of
class collectivities, but with the bases in essential relations of such groupings.
All that is theorised is the possible existence of class entities. Moreover, it is
the separation of labour from its conditions of production, thereby creating
wage-labour and capital in antagonism, which ultimately provides the basis
for the existence of classes of 'possessors' or 'owners'. This theorisation
implies therefore that capital and wage-labour cannot be conflated with
capitalists and wage-labourers. Neither, incidentally, can surplus-value and
variable capital be conflated with profit and wages (a truth valid for all
essential and phenomenal categories). This means, for instance, that a strict
mechanical notion of limits - that is, a conflation of revenue with its basis -
has the same theoretical effect as ignoring the basis of revenue altogether.
To posit or imply such a conflation is to assert a predetermined harmony
between essential relations and phenomenal forms. It is such procedures
which underline both economism and a currently popular relativism.7 No
pre-ordained equality can be said to exist between the basis of revenue and
revenue itself, rather the first category is simply necessary in order to explain
the existence of the second.
The Basis of the Revenue of a Landed Class

The criteria which a theorisation of a class of landlords in the capitalist mode
of production would have to fulfil can now briefly be stated as follows:
( i) such a theorisation should show that this class is founded on a
distinct basis and that this basis is the product of, and is reproduced
along with, antagonistic capitalist production relations;

( ii) landowners should have a distinct revenue which should also be
founded on a specific basis which must form a particular magnitude of
value;
(iii) the basis of revenue should be distinct from revenue itself and
should be contained between definite limits of value. These limits
should exist independently of the landlords' will and should be the
product of capitalist production relations;
( iv) finally, in order for landowners not to constitute a fraction of
capital but an independent class, in addition to the above, their basis
should have an existence independent of, and antagonistic to, wage-
labour and capital, the bases of the other two classes.
I have shown so far how Marx considers landed property to make possible
the existence of a capitalist landed class through its separation from produc-
tion, and hence how landed property forms the basis of such a class. I have
also shown how for Marx a specifically capitalist form of landed property
develops historically along with and as part of capitalist production rela-
tions. The notion has also been introduced that capitalist landed property
fulfils a distinct and independent function from that of capital. I shall return
to these points in due course; for the present it is necessary to examine the
basis of the revenue of this landed class.
We know from our earlier exposition that rent, the revenue of a class of
capitalist landowners, has a specifically capitalist character in accordance
with its historical nature. We also know that rent emanates from surplus-
value, that the landlords receive a portion of the surplus value produced by
the capitalist. How then does Marx proceed to theorise this particular form
of revenue? It follows from our argument so far that it would not be
sufficient, in order to explain rent, first, to explain surplus-value and,
second, to explain the realisation of a portion of this surplus-value by a
number of landowners. This procedure would not explain a class revenue
but only an accidental revenue, for a class revenue implies a unity. What has
to be explained is the fact that the portion of surplus-value realised by this
class is contained within specified structural limits and that this determinate
portion of surplus-value is analytically distinct from the revenue (or realised
value) itself. In addition, the existence of this determinate portion of value
must be explained independently of the actions of the landed class.
Marx makes these various points himself. The magnitude of ground-rent,
he notes, 'is by no means determined by the actions of its recipient, but is
determined rather by the independent development of social labour in
which the recipient takes no part' [1865: 636; see also 616]. To explain
surplus-value is not to explain ground-rent [1865: 634-9], for a specific
portion of surplus-value cannot be explained by mere references to the
general conditions for the existence of surplus-value. Such a vulgar error, he
says, is made by those who confuse the general determination of value with
the realisation of this value in a specific commodity [1865: 639]. Rather one
has to explain the existence of a specific determinate portion of value and the
subsequent realisation of this value by the landowning class. Hence Marx
argues 'the various forms of manifestation of ground-rent, that is, the lease
money paid under the heading of ground-rent to the landlord for the use of
the land for purposes of production or consumption' must be distinguished
from the form of value, ground-rent itself [1865: 633]. The former is paid at
regular periods, fixed by contract in the same manner as wages are paid
hourly, daily, weekly or monthly according to contract. The magnitude of
this lease money, of this revenue, is determined by many more factors than
just ground-rent, as it may conceal interest on capital invested on the land,
and apart from this, it may also conceal a deduction from the average profit
of the capitalist, or a deduction from the labourer's wages. Nevertheless,
'economically speaking neither the one nor the other of these portions
constitutes ground-rent;, but, in practice, it constitutes the landlord's
revenue ... much as actual ground-rent... ' [1865: 625]. The magnitude of
any landlord's lease money (the phenomenal form of ground-rent) will
depend also (like other forms of revenue, for example, profit) on his
'business acumen', and on the struggle between the landlord and the capital-
ist (and that between the capitalist and the wage-labourer).
The main problem regarding Marx's theorisation of rent arises at this
point. This is concerned with the fact that although he warns us that much of
the confusion surrounding ground-rent is due to the fact that 'in practice,
naturally, everything appears as ground-rent that is paid as lease money by
tenant to landlord for the right to cultivate the soil' [1865: 625], he does not
systematically maintain throughout his exposition the crucial distinction
between on the one hand ground-rent as a portion of value, an essential
category, and on the other lease money or revenue, a phenomenal category.
This has had the unfortunate effect of allowing readings of Marx's theory of
rent which conflate essential categories with their phenomenal representa-
tion - with disastrous results. Nevertheless Marx's warnings are quite clear
and it is possible to have a reading of his theory which is consonant with the
position outlined so far.
It is not necessary at this point to provide a detailed explication of all the
intricacies of the theory of rent; rather, only the basic features of Marx's
theorisation need to be outlined, as my primary concern is with landed
property. Let us therefore turn to Marx's theorisation of the basis of the
landlords' revenue, what he sometimes calls 'real economic rent' or 'actual
ground rent'. It must be kept in mind that the problem confronting Marx is
not one of explaining the existence of a rent derived from selling agricultural
commodities above their value. Such as explanation could not account for
the continuous and systematic existence of a landowning class. This is
because such a form of rent like, for instance, a rent derived from a
monopoly price, would only thereby be accounted for accidentally- like any
industrial monopoly price, or a price derived from speculation on the market
- as it would only be determined by supply and demand [1865: 775]. It is not
that such prices and the revenues derived therefrom do not exist, but rather
that no general theory of price can be determined on the basis of demand and
supply. Only value can explain price, hence Marx's theory must be able to
explain the existence of a category of rent as a portion of the value of
agricultural commodities. Landlords, therefore, should have a basis for
their revenue when agricultural commodities sell at, or even below, their
value. What must be explained, therefore, is the existence of limits, of a
systematic 'place' within value, or more precisely within surplus-value,
which will provide the basis of a revenue for a landed class. Marx conceptual-
ises three such places: three forms of rent. They are: differential rent I;
differential rent II; and absolute rent.
At this juncture several conceptual definitions must be introduced. As I
have already intimated, when Marx comes to examine the total social capital
(as opposed to individual capitals) he drops the assumption that commod-
ities sell at their value and argues that in a capitalist economy there develops
a general rate of profit which capitalists use as the basis for their individual
profit calculations. The formation of this general rate of profit occurs
through a process of equalisation whereby, due to competition, amounts of
capital tend to gravitate toward those spheres of investment where the rate
of profit (s/c+v) is highest, thus producing a fall in the abnormally high, and
a rise in the abnormally low profit rates [1865: Part 2]. The upshot of the
matter is that individual profits are thereby calculated on the average rate of
profit obtaining in an economy. Prices of production are the prices at which,
discounting temporary oscillations due to supply and demand, commodities
will normally sell. Prices of production are formed by the cost price plus a
profit calculated on the average rate of profit. This process of equalisation is
a necessary condition for accumulation (extended reproduction), for in its
absence the cheapening of the capitalist's costs of production (that is, the
continuous increase in the extraction of surplus-value which capitalism
needs in order to survive) could not take place. The effect of the capitalist
exploitation of agriculture is to place obstacles in the way of the equalisation
of the rate of profit, both within the agricultural sphere and between
agriculture and industry. More precisely, this effect consists in creating
different kinds of permanent surplus profit, which constitute real economic
rent.
Now, surplus profits can exist in all spheres of production. They generally
imply that the individual price of production of a commodity is lower than
the average price of production. A surplus profit arises, for example, after
the introduction of new machinery or a technique which, by increasing
labour productivity, decreases the price of production of an individual
capitalist's commodities in relation to the average price. After a time,
however, as this new machinery or technique is adopted by other capitalists
in this branch, the average price of production falls and the capitalist who
initially made the innovation is no longer in a position to produce a surplus
profit.
A similar process takes place within agriculture but, whereas it was the
introduction of an innovatory technique which caused the formation of a
surplus profit in industry, in agriculture a surplus profit can also arise out of
the utilisation of a plot of land with higher than average fertility. A capitalist
farmer exploiting a plot of land which by virtue of its natural fertility or
location (independent of capital investment) increases the productivity of
his labour force, thereby reducing the price of production of his
commodities, is in a position to make a surplus profit. Contrary to his
equivalent in industry, however, this lucky capitalist farmer's surplus profit
is permanent. It is permanent because the higher natural fertility of the plot
he exploits is not available to other capitalists. The plot is owned, or as Marx
sometimes puts it 'monopolised', by a landlord who is thereby in a position
to realise this surplus profit or rent by adjusting his lease money accordingly,
while the capitalist farmer sells his commodities at the average price of
production. This form of rent which arises out of the application of equal
amounts of capital to plots of varying fertility or location Marx terms
differential rent I [1865: 645]. Hence, the fact that advantages in natural
fertility or location are not equally available to all capital, gives particular
capitals the ability to produce a surplus profit which is contained within the
limits imposed by the average price of production and the individual price of
production. This fact means that the mechanism of the equalisation of the
rate of profit cannot operate within agriculture; which means in addition,
given a particular state of demand, that the market price of agricultural
products will be regulated by the worst cultivated land. On this land there
will be no differential rent.
Differential rent II is similar in substance to differential rent I, but rather
than arising from the application of equal magnitudes of capital to plots of
differential fertility, it arises out of the application of different amounts of
capital to plots of equal fertility, or to the same plot [1865: 678]. The
particularly important feature of differential rent II consists in the fact that
the more capital is invested in the land, the greater the surplus profit and
hence the greater the potential for revenue realisation by the landed class,
with the result that capital encounters a barrier to its accumulation [1865:
725]. In other words, as capitalism develops, so does investment in agricul-
ture increase and so does the magnitude of real economic rent, as expressed
by differential rent II. Both forms of differential rent, however, are indi-
vidual forms of rent in the sense that they only exist on particular plots and
hence can only be realised by particular landlords - those who possess the
more productive plots. Differential rent arises from differences in the pro-
ductivity of labour within agriculture and, in addition, it does not enter into
the price of agricultural commodities as these are regulated by the worst
plots which do not receive any differential rent.
In order to explain the existence of an economic rent on the worst plots,
Marx introduces the concept of absolute rent. This form of rent does enter
into the market price of agricultural commodities and is explained by the fact
that the sphere of agriculture as a whole is less productive than industry.
Marx argues that as capitalism develops at a slower rate in agriculture,8 the
organic composition of capital (c/v) will be lower in agriculture than in
industry (which is only another way of saying that the productivity of social
labour is lower in agriculture than in industry). Assuming an equal rate of

exploitation (s/v) in the two spheres, the value of agricultural commodities
will be higher than their price of production [1865: 758-9]. Thus, because of
the historical fact that the productivity of labour is initially lower in agricul-
ture than in industry, there exists another form of rent covering the sphere of
agriculture as a whole. This absolute rent is limited in magnitude by the
difference between the values and prices of production of agricultural com-
modities. The possibility therefore exists for all landlords, and not just those
on the better plots (that is, for the landlord class as a whole), to extract a
revenue, even though agricultural commodities are selling at their value.
According to Marx, the landlords realise absolute rent in the following
manner. Let us assume, for example, that, given a particular rate of exploita-
tion, the demand for agricultural commodities is satisfied without all land
being brought into cultivation. If the market price of agricultural commod-
ities is equal to their price of production, the landlords cannot realise any
absolute ground-rent as it does not exist; but if the market price were to rise
above the price of production, the landlords would be in a position to acquire
a revenue from absolute rent on the land they cultivate. However, in this
latter case they could also realise absolute rent on further plots if they
brought these into cultivation also, as long as the market price did not
thereby fall. As long as the market price is situated at a level above the price
of production, the landlord is in a position to realise a revenue from absolute
rent without altering the profit of the capitalist farmer. 'Thus assuming the
demand requires that new land be taken under cultivation' [1865: 757], then
as soon as the landlord judges the difference between market price and price
of production to be sufficient, he will release his land for cultivation [loc.
cit.]. Hence, as the landlord is the sole owner or 'monopolist' of land, he will
only release his land for cultivation if the market price rises above the price
of production. If, in addition, this market price is situated at, or below, the
value of the agricultural commodity, the landlord would be receiving a
revenue while the commodity was sold at, or below, its value.
Let me emphasise an important point here. The ability of the landlord to
withdraw or release land for cultivation 'at will' should not lead us to the
false conclusion that the landlord is a monopolist strictu sensu. It should be
noted that landlords do not normally act in concert, with the result that the
releasing of land for cultivation will have a tendency to reduce the market
price. As Marx makes clear on several occasions, the price of agricultural
products do not constitute, in general, monopoly prices; and competition
between landlords limits the market price and hence the revenue derived
from absolute rent.' In addition, if the landlord were in a monopoly position,
not only would it be irrelevant to limit absolute rent between value and price
of production, but also in this case the landlord would be creating his own
revenue himself and not just realising it. What monopoly would mean is that
the mere fact that the landlord owns the land would enable him to charge for
his products as much as the market could bear. The landlord would then be
in a position to create his own revenue, and hence to reproduce himself for
ever. In actual fact:

The mere legal ownership of land does not create any ground rent for
the owner. But if it does, indeed, give him the power to withdraw his
land from exploitation until economic conditions permit him to utilise
it in such a manner as to yield him a surplus, be it used for actual
agricultural or other production purposes, such as buildings, etc. He
cannot increase or decrease the absolute magnitude of this sphere, but
he can change the quantity of land placed on the market. Hence as
Fourier already observed, it is a characteristic fact that in all civilised
countries a comparatively appreciable portion of land always remains
uncultivated [loc. cit.].
The crucial point of Marx's argument is that the difference between market
price and price of production can be systematically situated within the limits
of value and price of production, because productivity is lower in agricul-
ture. This means that an absolute rent can be realised in the form of revenue
without agricultural commodities selling above their value. These agricultu-
ral commodities may sell above their value, but this can be the case with all
commodities and not just agricultural ones. For Marx there is no such thing
as a 'natural agricultural monopoly'.10 The magnitude of that part of lease-
money derived from absolute rent which can be realised by a particular
landlord depends on his ability to 'play the market' - that is, to speculate. As
is the case with the capitalist, the magnitude of any individual landlord's
revenue depends on his 'business acumen'. Hence the landlord does not
create rent through his own ability, but merely realises a greater or lesser
portion of this rent. Ultimately, the magnitude of lease-money or revenue he
obtains will depend on the level of demand which determines the difference
between market price and price of production.
It is the fact that the landlord is sole possessor of the land which means that
market conditions can be partly manipulated in order that the difference
between value and price of production may be realised as a revenue: ' ...
market conditions enable the landlord to realise this difference' [1865: 810].
But this is only another way of saying that it is the fact that landed property is
separate from capital, which enables the realisation of rent. The same can be
said with regard to differential rent. It is the peculiar capitalist form of
landed property, in other words the separation of landed property from
capital, which accounts for the realisation of rent, for the transformation of
economic rent, a part of surplus-value into lease money. But this realisation
of rent means that the equalisation of the rate of profit cannot operate either
within agriculture or between the spheres of agriculture and industry.
Capital cannot pocket the surplus profit which constitutes its original 'incen-
tive' for moving into a sector of production, a process which thereby nor-
mally equalises the rate of profit. Landed property therefore constitutes a
barrier to the penetration of capital into agriculture. It must be noted, of
course, that this obstacle is not an absolute one but a relative one. Capital
will penetrate agriculture, but the extent to which it does, is determined by

the class struggle between capitalists and landowners, as the magnitude of
lease money is determined by this struggle.
In sum the existence of rent is first explained by the social relation
between wage-labour and capital. All three forms of rent are part of the
socially produced surplus-value and presupposes the formation of an aver-
age rate of profit. These conditions, along with the surplus profits they
create, are the effects of a capital/wage-labour relation. But this relation
only explains the existence of surplus profits and the possible limits of such
profits. In order to explain the definite and systematic existence of such
limits - in other words the transformation of surplus profit into real econo-
mic rent - a further social condition is necessary: the separation of landed
property from capital. Capitalist landed property may take the form of an
independent class of landed proprietors so that rent is realised in the form of
lease money. Thus the existence of rent can only be secured if in addition to
the capital/wage-labour relation, there exists an antagonistic relation
between landed property and capital. It is only because landed property
exists independently of capital," or, to put the same point phenomenally,
because landowners form a specific grouping which exists outside of the
production process, and can consequently demand 'as of right' a portion of
the surplus-value for the use of their land, that the equalisation of the rate of
profit is impeded and that surplus profit is transformed into rent.
The mere existence of an excess in the value of agricultural products
over their price of production would not in itself suffice to explain the
existence of a ground r e n t . . . . But ... if capital meets an alien force
which it can but partially, or not at all, overcome, and which limits its
investment in certain spheres, admitting it only under conditions which
wholly or partly exclude that general equalisation of surplus-value to
an average profit, then it is evident that the excess of the value of
commodities in such spheres of production over their price of produc-
tion would give rise to a surplus profit, which could be converted into
rent and as such made independent with respect to profit. Such an alien
force and barrier are presented Ijy landed property, when confronting
capital in its endeavour to invest in land; such a force is the landlord
vis-a-vis the capitalist [1865: 760, 761].
In the same way as surplus-value only exists through its various manifesta-
tions (profit, interest, lease money and so on), so does rent, a part of
surplus-value, only exist through its phenomenal form of lease money. In the
same way as capital cannot, on its own, create surplus-value, landed prop-
erty cannot create rent. Surplus-value only exists, and capitalists can only
realise it, in the form of profit, because of the relations between capital and
wage-labour. Rent only exists, and landlords can only realise it, in the form
of lease-money, because of the relation between landed property and
capital. Rent is therefore 'not a law of nature, but a social law', it 'results
from the social relations in which the exploitation of the land takes place'
[1863b: 96; 1847: 205].l2 Thus landowners, like capitalists and wage-
labourers, do not create their own revenues. What landlords do, like other
classes, is to realise a revenue from their basis which exists beyond their will.
The process of realisation of revenue is, however, crucial, for by this very act
the essential relations of capitalism are reproduced. The extraction of lease-
money reproduces the rent relation, the realisation of profit and interest
reproduces surplus-value and so on. The reproduction of phenomenal clas-
ses in struggle reproduces the contradictions between wage-labour, capital
and landed property.
In view of my earlier argument it is superfluous to show again how these
production relations are created through a historical process of separation of
landed property, capital and wage-labour from each other. Marx makes it
clear that this process operates throughout - indeed it is the necessary result
of - the process of capitalist development.
... the continual tendency and law of development of the capitalist
mode of production is more and more to divorce the means of produc-
tion from labour, and more and more to concentrate the scattered
means of production into large groups, thereby transforming labour
into wage-labour and means of production into capital. And to this
tendency, on the other hand, corresponds the independent separation
of landed property from capital and labour, or the transformation of all
landed property into the form of landed property corresponding to the
capitalist mode of production [1865: 885].
This triple separation of landed property from capital, of landed property
from wage-labour, and of wage-labour from capital, is what constitutes the
essential relations of capitalism which provide, for Marx, the bases of the
three main classes of the capitalist mode of production capitalists, wage-
labourers and landowners.
It follows from my argument that a specifically capitalist form of landed
property can only exist if three conditions are secured. First, the capital/
wage-labour relations must exist; second, this relation rnust produce surplus
profits which have the possibility of becoming entrenched through their
transformation into real economic rent; and third, landed property must
exist separated from capital in order to transform such surplus profits into
rent. In other words, a capital/landed property relation must exist. It should
also be kept in mind, although this should be clear, that the fact that landed
property might exist, does not imply in any way that a class of landowners (a
collectivity of individuals) also exists within a particular social formation. In
a similar manner, the existence of capital does not of necessity imply the
existence of a class of individual capitalists. The functions of capital of
landed property may be fulfilled by the state, by corporations, or by any
number of agencies. The bases of classes need not take the forms of actual
collectivities in any given social formation. The existence of landed property
is the necessary (but not sufficient) condition of existence of a class of
landlords.
III. CLASS OR FRACTION?

At this point in the argument, having shown how Marx theorises the condi-
tions of existence of landed property, we arrive at the question of whether
landlords are thereby theorised as a class or as a fraction of capital. I have
insisted so far on the particularly capitalist nature of landed property and on
how this nature is constituted: primarily by the separation of landed prop-
erty from capital, as well as from wage-labour. The separation of landed
property from capital is the phenomenon which lies at the root of the
capital/landed property relation. This separation is reproduced by the con-
tinual production and realisation of rent, the determinate nature of which
constitutes part of Marx's theorisation of a 'place' for a class of landowners. I
have also shown how landed property, itself the product of capitalism,
constitutes an obstacle to capitalist development by forming a barrier to the
process of equalisation. This is, however, no ordinary obstacle. First, it
constitutes a structural and not a mere accidental obstacle; and second, its
effect is to impede one of the fundamental laws of capitalism: that of the
equalisation of the rate of profit. Fortunately for capital, however, the
continued existence of landed property is not a necessary condition of
capitalist production. Capital can exist without landed property. Not only is
this the case, as will be shown below, but landed property, because of the
obstacle it constitutes, is positively harmful to capitalism. In this it 'differs
from other kinds of property' [1865: 622].
The question which must now be asked is the following: is landed property
the only part of capital to constitute such an obstacle or does Marx suggest
that this is also the case with other 'fractions' of capital? It is well known that
Marx discusses several fractions in his work: interest-bearing capital, com-
mercial capital, merchant's capital, and so on. Any systematic answer to this
question would, of course, require a thorough discussion of Marx's theorisa-
tion of these various capitals, but this would take us far beyond the scope of
this article. Nevertheless, Marx does make several remarks which, added to
the theorisation so far elaborated, lead to the conclusion that landed
property is fundamentally distinguished from other such capitals by the fact
that it is the sole agent apart from wage-labour to be constituted in
antagonism to capital. These statements imply that fractions of capital are all
constituent parts of the same capital and do not constitute in any way 'alien
forces' which capital has to confront. In other words, they are truly fractions
of capital in general, and do not constitute obstacles to its development. On
the contrary, Marx suggests that such fractions fulfil necessary, or at least
important, functions in the circulation and/or production of capital. I just
want to mention two such fractions here: merchant's capital and interest-
bearing capital. Both of these are particularly interesting because, in a
sense, like landed property, they seem to pre-date capitalism [1865: Chs. 20
and 36; 1867: 161-2].
Merchant's or 'trading' capital is concentrated in the sphere of circulation,

in the market. Because the total social capital can be divided into production
capital and capital of circulation, the functions of the two may be separated,
with the former existing solely in the production sphere and the latter in the
sphere of circulation. Nevertheless, Marx stresses, 'these are two different
and separate forms of existence of the same capital' [1865: 268, my emph-
asis]. In addition, the physical separation of these two capitals into two
distinct classes has several advantages for capitalism, which have the effect
of decreasing the period of turnover of capital (by shortening the time of
circulation), increasing productivity and hence, also increasing capital accu-
mulation [1865: 274-6, 280]. Thus not only does merchant's capital not
constitute an obstacle to capital, it positively promotes labour productivity
and capital accumulation. It thus fulfils important positive functions for
capitalism, and this despite the fact that it appropriates a portion of surplus-
value from industrial capital. For the latter it is 'money well spent'.
Interest-bearing or 'loan capital' is also paid from surplus-value. The fact
that it also constitutes the prerogative of a separate class of financiers has
many advantages for capitalism [1865: 435-41]. The distinction between
interest-bearing capital and landed property is even easier to draw, for Marx
notes it explicitly:
Landed property is a means for grabbing a part of the surplus-value
produced by industrial capital. On the other hand, loan capital- to the
extent that the capitalist operates with borrowed capital - is a means
for producing the whole of the surplus-value. That money [commod-
ities] can be loaned out as capital means nothing more than that it is
itself capital. The abolition of landed property in the Ricardian sense,
that is, its conversion into state property so that rent is paid to the state
instead of to the landlord, is the ideal, the heart's desire, which springs
from the deepest, inmost essence of capital ... Abolition of interest
and of interest-bearing capital, on the other hand, means the abolition
of capital and of capitalist production itself ... There are not two
different kinds of capital - interest-bearing and profit-yielding - but
the selfsame capital which operates in the process of production as
capital, produces a profit which is divided between two different
capitalists - one standing outside the process, and as owner, represent-
ing capital as such ..., and the other representing operating capital,
capital which takes part in the production process [1863c: 472-3].
Thus it seems that for Marx fractions of capital form part of a unity of capital
and fulfil important positive functions for it. Landed property, on the other
hand, is constituted in opposition to it, and exists outside of it. In Grundrisse
Marx emphasises this point precisely when, discussing the development of
capitalist landed property, he notes that ground-rent 'is the only value
created by capital which is distinct from itself, from its own production'
[1858: 275-6]. In Capital also we are told that capital includes landed
property 'as its antithesis' [1865:879]. The foregoing remarks, along with the
theorisation I have outlined, do indeed seem to suggest that, under capital-
ism, landed property constitutes the basis of a distinct class along with capital
and wage-labour.
Nevertheless landed property need not exist under capitalism. Indeed, we
have seen that for Marx it is superfluous and harmful to the capitalist mode
of production. We must now therefore turn to an examination of the
conditions of its disappearance.
We have seen that the economic conditions of existence of capitalist
landed property are capitalist production relations, a determinate category
of real economic rent (surplus profits) and the capital/landed property
relation. Let us examine each in turn. The first condition-capitalism itself—
hardly deserves any comment. It is quite clear from what has already been
said that, in the absence of capitalist relations, there is no generalised
commodity production, no surplus-value and no capital. Under such condi-
tions, of course, there is no capitalist landed property. However, the other
two conditions, with certain qualifications, need not necessarily pertain
under capitalist conditions, thus occasioning the disappearance of landed
property. I say 'with certain qualifications' because, as I shall proceed to
show, the abolition of landed property is not necessarily the immediate, nor
the automatic result of the absence of such features. Rather, the disappear-
ance of landed property should be seen as a more or less rapid phenomenon,
which results ultimately from the pressures brought to bear by the dis-
appearnce of landed property's conditions of existence, pressures which it
finds very difficult to resist. Like all processes of transformation of essential
relations, this process is a gradual one, conditioned by struggles. It cannot
simply be accomplished by legal measures.
If we turn to the second condition of existence of capitalist landed prop-
erty, namely, real economic rent, it follows from our argument, for example,
that agriculture may attain the level of productivity pertaining in industry. In
such a case the difference between price of production and value, which
forms the limits of absolute rent, will be abolished. In the absence of
absolute rent the landlord may nevertheless still attempt to acquire a form of
revenue not based on differential rent. If he succeeds in doing so his revenue
will consist of either a deduction from the capitalist's profit or a deduction
from the labourer's wage, or both. Faced with a deduction from profit, the
capitalist could either move out to a more profitable area of investment, or
pay for his labour power below its value.11 In either case, however, the
intensification of the class struggle may force landed property to rely solely
on differential rent. Anyhow, the details of such struggles can only be
analysed in conjunctural situations. What is important here is that the
absence of absolute rent may occasion the disapperance of landed property,
at least on those plots which rely solely on this form of rent; in other words,
on the worst plots.
It may seem paradoxical that landed property may exist on certain plots
and not on others, but only if we forget that capitalist landed property is
characterised by its separation from capital. It follows that if this separation
does not exist - for example, if the capitalist and the landowner are one and
the same person - landed property, in the capitalist sense, also ceases to
exist. Marx refers to this phenomenon as the 'de facto abolition' of landed
property. We can understand this point more clearly through an examina-
tion of the third and final condition of existence of capitalist landed prop-
erty: the capital/landed property relation itself. The abolition of this relation
requires the abolition of the separation of landed property from capital. As
capitalist landed property cannot exist without capital, the abolition of the
relation amounts to a takeover of landed property by capital. This can occur
in two distinct ways: either, on the one hand, the capitalist state or the
capitalist himself becomes a landowner, or, on the other hand, the land-
owner is transformed into a capitalist.
The most well known of these options is the nationalisation of the land.
This is what Marx refers to as the abolition of landed property 'in the
Ricardian sense', or the 'legal' abolition of landed property [e.g., 1863b:
44-5, 152-3; 1863c: 472; 1865: 75]. The transformation of land into the
property of the state abolishes, of course, the ability of the landlord to realise
a revenue and hence it abolishes the class of landowners. This measure is,
however, a bourgeois measure as it does not touch capitalist production
relations. Marx exhibited an ambivalent attitude to this measure, at times
asserting it to be progressive and recommending it as a transitional measure
for a socialist state [1848b: 52], at other times condemning it as in effect (as
we shall see) a measure to expand capitalist exploitation [1881: 323; 1847:
203]. In this context an important point must be mentioned. This consists in
the fact that although the nationalisation of land abolishes immediately the
existence of a class of landowners, it does not necessarily abolish landed
property. This is because (a) the basis of rent in the existence of surplus
profit may still exist, and (b) even though the land is now the legal property
of the state rather than that of individuals, landed property is still separated
from capital. Engels, for example, was very much aware of this fact:
the abolition of property in land is not the abolition of ground rent but
its transfer, if in a modified form, to society. The actual seizure of all
the instruments of labour by the working people, therefore, does not at
all preclude the retention of rent relations [Engels, 1873: 370].
Hence, as long as capitalist production relations exist, it cannot be dis-
counted a priori, with the land as state property, that absolute as well as
differential rent might be realised to the detriment of capital. Under such
conditions it may be possible for the state to realise part or the whole of the
rent if it wishes and is able to do so.14 If the state does not realise this rent it
ceases to act as a barrier to capital, and in time landed property disappears.
Capital, however, need not rely on a legal measure such as land nationa-
lisation or redistribution in order to abolish landed property: 'landedprop-
erty may in effect also cease to exist where the capitalist and the owner of the
land are one and the same person' [1862:124]. Marx refers to this situation as
'de facto abolition of landed property' [1865: 751]. The obstacle to the
process of equalisation is removed and capital is free to move into agricul-
ture as in any other sphere of production, as 'the barrier of ownership ... can
make itself felt only vis-a-vis a capital... separated from landownership, by
erecting an obstacle to the investment of capital' [1865: 806]. This situation
eventually abolishes the difference between the value and price of produc-
tion of agricultural products by increasing labour productivity in agriculture.
The place of absolute rent in surplus-value disappears. This process also
abolishes differential rent II (assuming that innovation is available in equal
amounts to all capitals), as the capitalist farmer can now keep the surplus
profit derived from new investments for himself. Only differential rent I can
never be abolished as long as capitalist production relations persist, as the
surplus profits on which it is founded result from natural fertility and
location within the context of such relations.
The second option consists in the transformation of the landowner into a
capitalist. This constitutes the other form of 'de facto abolition'. As soon as
capitalist landed property is created, the struggle towards its abolition takes
place. If the landowner is rich enough, he may attempt to take over the
productive activity on the land himself [1858: 277]. He may prefer to
continue realising a rent rather than increase his investment, or he may
'modernise' only slowly, for in the short run the advantages of profit will
weigh against rent. Whether the landlord becomes a capitalist, or the
capitalist a landlord, depends on the outcome of the class struggle between
landed property and capital. In either case, the ultimate result is the penetra-
tion of capital into agriculture and the further development of capitalism.
Nevertheless, the importance of drawing the crucial distinction between the
two outcomes of the class struggle over landed property lies, as we shall see
below, in the different forms of capitalist development which they each
engender.
For the present the important point to be aware of is that in a situation
where landed property has disappeared de facto - where the independence
of landed property has been abolished by its incorporation into capital - in
such a case landed property can be said to constitute a fraction of capital in
the strict sense. Landed property in this case no longer constitutes an 'alien
force', but is now part and parcel of capital itself. It follows that, in such a
case, any attempt to nationalise the land would be striking at the heart of
capitalist relations themselves. Such a measure could be revolutionary, for it
would now be attacking private property itself, and it goes without saying
that an a priori support of industrial capital towards such a strategy cannot be
expected. Hence, all land nationalisation or land reform programmes need
not be straightforward bourgeois measures. It seems, therefore, that Marx
also allows for the possibility of landed property constituting a fraction of
capital, as well as theorising it as an independent class.
Having arrived at the end of our examination of Marx's theorisation of
landed property, it seems clear that capitalist production relations may, but
need not, include a capital/landed property relation as well as a capital/
wage-labour relation. The existence of a landed class does not imply either
the existence of, or the remains of, feudalism. The process of capitalist
development can only correctly be understood on this basis.
IV. LANDED PROPERTY AND CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT

I now want to draw out from the theorisation I have developed so far some of
the features of capitalist development and the crucial role played by landed
property in this process. In this way I hope to be able to provide some
guidelines for the analysis of the process of capitalist development through
an examination of the class struggles between capital, wage-labour and
landed property. In order to avoid misunderstanding let me stress that my
intention is simply to trace some of the general features of the process of
capitalist transformation and development. What follows is not intended to
be an analysis of any specific social formation, although it is intended to help
in an understanding of the process of development in certain social forma-
tions.
We have seen that for Marx, private property in land under capitalism
refers to an independent class of landowners. We have also seen that the
development of capitalism in agriculture depends on the overcoming of this
independence. I now want to insist that the development of capitalism in
agriculture does not constitute a separate process from the development of
capitalism throughout the economy. It is totally incorporated into the pro-
cess of capitalist development and accumulation as a whole, which can only
proceed on the basis of the development of the social productive powers of
labour in agriculture. Indeed, we have seen that Marx's analysis of agricul-
ture is based on a conception of the total social capital, thus it is the struggle
between wage-labour, capital and landed property throughout society, and
not just simply within agriculture, which concerns us here. It is the develop-
ment of capitalist accumulation as a whole, specifically the emergence and
reproduction of industrial capitalism based on the extraction of relative
surplus-value, which is hindered by the barrier of landed property. The
overcoming of this barrier results from a confrontation of landed property,
capital and wage-labour. According to the various forms and outcomes of
this struggle, there will be different processes of capitalist development in
different social formations. Now, I do not wish to be understood as saying
that this triple relation exhausts all the forms of capitalist development in
social formations. Apart from the fact that this struggle takes different
forms, and that different balances of class forces exist in social formations,
the latter also contain other classes and fractions which have not been
theorised here. For example, the role of imperialism is crucial in the process
of capitalist development in many social formations. Also, in Africa, for
example, the role of landowners is much less important than in Latin
America. These points notwithstanding, I would maintain that it is of crucial
importance to draw the general features of particular forms of change in
order that social formations be better understood. It is here that theory can
help, and it is with this point in mind that we must proceed to study the
effects of the struggle between landed property, capital and wage-labour.
The distinction on which I wish to concentrate here is one between what
might be termed a 'capital-led' and a 'landlord-led' form of capitalist
development. Capital-led devlopment can take place in a number of ways;
for example, through land nationalisation, redistributive land reforms, as
well as through a simple buying up of land by capital. The process is a
complex one, as agriculture also contains various peasant classes. Indeed,
the 'classical' Marxist conception of the development of capitalism in agri-
culture visualises the process as characterised by a differentiation of the
peasantry: some becoming capitalists and others, proletarians. Capital-led
development, therefore, also involves the transformation of a section of the
peasantry into capitalists, as well as landlord expropriation. As is well
known, this is what Lenin referred to as the 'peasant' or 'American' road to
capitalist development in his analysis of Russia. Capitalist transition under
the aegis of a landed class is referred to by Lenin as the 'Junker' or 'Prussian'
road to capitalist development. Both roads lead to the capitalist develop-
ment of agriculture, but Lenin argued for the support of the peasants'
demands for land nationalisation, as the peasant road would be more rapid
and would destroy the remaining feudal relations and would thus create
more favourable conditions for the advance to socialism. In this case 'the
development of capitalism and the growth of the productive forces would
have been wider and more rapid' [Lenin, 1907a: 240]. The 'Prussian' road,
on the other hand, is based on the 'internal metamorphosis of feudalist
landlord economy' [Lenin, 1907b: 32]. This form of transition 'would pre-
serve to the utmost the landlord economies, the landlord revenues, and the
landlord [bondage] methods of exploitation' [Lenin, 1907a: 240].
Lenin's intention was to argue for the nationalisation of the land and its
distribution to peasant enterprises in order to encourage a 'peasant road'
(the emergence of capitalist farmers from the ranks of the peasantry) to
capitalist development, and to provide the socio-economic foundation for a
bourgeois-democratic revolution. In this context he was acutely aware of the
fact that a correct comprehension of the effects of land nationalisation
requires an analysis of capitalist ground-rent [1907a: 297]. There are,
however, two small problems exhibited by Lenin's formulation of the 'two
roads' which need to be mentioned in this context. First, to call the two roads
to the capitalist development of agriculture 'Junker road' and 'peasant road'
gives the unfortunate impression that this process is the result of a struggle
within agriculture alone. Lenin's formulation could thus be misleading
despite the fact that in his own analyses of the development of capitalism, he
was acutely aware of the effects of forces outside agriculture on the trans-
formation of agriculture itself [Lenin, 1899: Chs. 3-7]. In order to avoid the
impression that agriculture can be understood as a self-contained realm I
shall prefer to utilise the terms capital-led and landlord-led forms of capital-
ist development. In this sense, Lenin's 'peasant' and 'Junker' roads are
visualised as specific instances in the realm of agriculture, of more general

processes operating throughout society. Second, although it is not my inten-
tion to contradict Lenin's argument to the effect that landlord-led develop-
ment reproduced for a longer period the existence of feudal relations in
Russia, I want to suggest that, at a more general level, such a road to the
capitalist development of agriculture can be seen to do more than this. It
tends to rely on a specific form of the labour-process, based on the extraction
of absolute surplus-value and in which labour is only formally subordinated
to capital. Capitalist development under the control of the landlords retards
the introduction of machinery into agriculture until they have gained control
of the production process, until they have transformed themselves into
capitalists. The dominance of the extraction of absolute surplus-value tends
to be associated with particularly repressive forms of social control, often
adapted from feudalism; but these 'institutional', 'legal' or 'traditional'
methods are not in themselves evidence of feudal production. On the
contrary, they must be described as essentially capitalist, as the extraction of
absolute surplus-value presupposes the transformation of labour into wage-
labour. Capital-led development, on the other hand, by drastically over-
coming the barrier of landed property, allows for the more rapid introduc-
tion of machinery into agriculture and the extraction of relative surplus-
value which, as well as transforming the social productive forces, as Lenin
makes clear, also helps to overcome some of the more repressive forms of
social control inherited and adapted from feudalism."
As is well known, absolute and relative surplus-value are, for Marx, two
different forms of surplus-value to which 'correspond two separate forms of
the subsumption of labour under capital, or two distinct forms of capitalist
production' [1866: 1025]. Absolute surplus-value is characterised by the
'formal subordination' of labour to capital, while under relative surplus-
value extraction, this subordination is 'real'. The extraction of absolute
surplus-value takes place either by an extension of the working day (making
the labourer work longer hours) or by an increase in the intensity of labour
(making the labourer work harder). It amounts to a physical extension of
surplus-labour time. However, as I have already mentioned in the second
part of this article, there are both physical and social limits to the length of
the working day, with the result that the extraction of surplus-value in its
absolute form can only operate within these strict limits, with a correspond-
ing restriction on profits and capital accumulation [1867: 223].l6
The extraction of relative surplus-value, on the other hand, is not founded
on an extension of the working day. In a situation where working time is
given (for example, by legislation) or generally restricted by working-class
struggles, greater quantities of surplus-value can be extracted by decreasing
the value of labour-power and hence necessary labour-time. This is done,
Marx argues, by introducing new machinery and techniques which increase
labour productivity in those branches of industry which provide the socially
necessary means of subsistence [1867: 299]. We know already that by the
introduction of new techniques, the industrial capitalist will make a tempor-

ary surplus profit. Marx refers to this process as an additional incentive to
increase the productivity of labour [1867: 301]; nevertheless, he notes (as
this surplus profit vanishes as soon as other capitalists have acquired the
same technique), 'the general rate of surplus-value is . . . ultimately affected
by the whole process, only when the increase in the productiveness of
labour, has seized upon those branches of production that are connected
with . . . the necessary means of subsistence' [1867: 302, emphasis added].
Thus relative surplus-value is not just about the introduction of machinery
per se, nor is the rapid capital accumulation characteristic of industrialisa-
tion merely an effect of the laws of competition, rather the increase in the
rate of exploitation throughout society on which such an accumulation is
founded, is contingent on the generalised fall in the value of labour-power
throughout society. Incidentally there are no strict limits to the development
of technology and hence to the increase in the extraction of relative surplus-
value. The existence of relative surplus-value corresponds to a qualitatively
different form of capitalist production: a purely and typically capitalist form
despite the fact that its introduction also tends to increase absolute surplus-
value extraction [1867: 478]. It cannot exist in pre-capitalist modes of
production bjut it nevertheless always presupposes the previous existence of
surplus-value in its absolute form [1866: 1025]. Both absolute and relative
surplus-value are purely capitalist forms.
It is not too hard to see that as long as absolute surplus-value constitutes
the main form of extraction of surplus-value, this tends to imply the exist-
ence of 'extra economic' forms of coercion and control over labour such as
unfree labour, bonded labour and so on. It must be emphasised, however,
that such forms of social control, although they may be derived from
feudalism, are not in themselves feudal. They fulfil a capitalist function, that
of increasing the extraction of surplus-value. They are not in themselves
evidence of feudal relations. They could only be confused with feudalism if
the latter were defined in 'institutional', 'legal' or 'political' terms. In addi-
tion, to confuse these relations with feudalism is to make the mistake noted
in an earlier section of this article with reference to private property. It is to
assert a supra-social or ahistorical conception of political forms. The extrac-
tion of absolute surplus-value will, of course, continue to exist with the
development of technology and the existence of relative surplus-value. The
latter also requires the control of labour. The point, however, is that in those
cases where absolute surplus-value constitutes the sole or main form of
extraction of surplus-value, greater repression and control of labour is more
likely.
This repression may also, in a sense, be greater than under feudalism
because as the extraction of absolute surplus-value is a capitalist process, it
implies a necessity to extract more and more surplus-value, it implies accu-
mulation for the sake of accumulation, production for the sake of production
[1866: 1037]. Under feudalism and other pre-capitalist modes there is no
such compelling necessity [1867: 226].
It can readily be appreciated at this stage of the argument that during and
following the creation of capitalist landed property in the period of 'primi-
tive accumulation', agricultural production only relies on a formal subsump-
tion of labour - on the extraction of absolute surplus-value. The develop-
ment of the real subordination of labour in agriculture is impeded by the
barrier of landed property, which constitutes an obstacle to investment in
this sector. Hence, the longer the barrier of landed property exists, the
longer will the extraction of relative surplus-value be impeded in agriculture
and the longer will agricultural capital have to be confined to the extraction
of absolute surplus-value. This implies, therefore, the longer persistence of
highly repressive, but essentially capitalist forms of labour control within
this sector. However, as soon as the barrier of private property is overcome,
whether in a form which is led by capital or by landed property itself, capital
investment can circulate freely within agriculture and the real subsumption
of labour can take place in this sector without hindrance.
It will be recalled that a consequence of the failure of the process of
equalisation to operate in agriculture (or between agriculture and industry)
is that the price of agricultural products will be higher than they would be
otherwise. This is because, as we know, the introduction of new machinery
or techniques raises the productivity of labour and thereby cheapens the
individual prices of commodities, and, after equalisation, their social value.
But agriculture, especially in early capitalism, is the main producer of food,
one of the necessities of life. This means that the value of labour-power (in
society as a whole and in industry in particular) will be higher than it would
be if landed property were abolished. Hence, the decrease in the price of
food via the abolition of landed property, leads to an increase in the quantity
of extracted (relative) surplus-value throughout society. The extraction of
relative surplus-value, as we have seen, operates by decreasing the value of
labour-power, by cheapening the necessities of life. These necessities are the
products of various industries and sectors [1867: 299]; but agriculture is the
only such sector in which a structural obstacle is provided to the cheapening
of its commodities. Hence, this obstacle must be overcome before the value
of labour-power in society can be cheapened. This is the basis of the
'agrarian question' under capitalism for Marx -that is, the problem which an
agriculture characterised by independent landed property constitutes for

capital. This point needs stressing. The 'problem of agriculture' is a
bourgeois problem, the product of bourgeois relations and not a natural
problem of 'industrialisation' in the abstract as is often maintained [e.g.,
Dobb, 1967, Byres, 1977]. The necessary abolition of landed property and
the capitalisation of agriculture which rapid capital accumulation requires
leads to a generalised increase in the rate of exploitation throughout society.
Cheaper food for urban workers is the basis for their greater exploitation.'7
It thus follows from this argument that landed property must be abolished
from within the relations of production, that these be reduced solely to the
capital/wage-labour relation, in order for industrial capitalism to develop to
the full. As I have noted this does not necessarily imply that land must be
nationalised, but it does of necessity imply the suppression of an independent

class of landlords. This can only occur through class struggle. Hence, the
dominance of industrial capitalism throughout society requires a prior
alteration of social relations.
It also follows from our whole argument concerning the emergence of the
real subsumption of labour to capital, that two major factors influence the
rapidity of the development of industrial production throughout society.
One is the abolition of landed property - the faster it is abolished, the more
rapidly will capitalist development take place. The other is the shortening of
the length of the working day (or more generally the struggle to increase
relatively the value of labour-power). The sooner the length of the working
day is shortened, the sooner will capital be forced to switch from the
extraction of absolute, to the extraction of relative surplus-value. The first of
these factors depends on the relative strength of industrial capital (often in
alliance with wage-labour and sections of the peasantry) vis-a-vis landed
property; the second depends on the relative strength of wage-labour vis-a-
vis capital. The development of capitalism can thus be seen as the outcome
of a class struggle between wage-labour, capital and landed property.
I have been concerned in this section to argue (i) that the process of the
capitalist development of agriculture is not necessarily one of a transition
from pre-capitalist to capitalist relations, but more usefully identified as the
development of different capitalist forms, (ii) that these different forms are
the outcome of the leadership of the process of capitalist development by
different essential entities (landed property or capital), (iii) that this capital-
ist development of agriculture must be understood as the outcome of strug-
gles throughout society and not just those within agriculture (for example,
landlords versus peasants) as agriculture cannot be understood as a self-
contained, more or less autonomous sector, and (iv) that rapid capital
accumulation or capitalist industrialisation itself is the outcome of class
struggle. In order to illustrate these struggles and in lieu of a conclusion, I
want to finish this article with a very brief examination of some concrete
situations. I shall first outline very briefly how Marx analyses the process of
development of the real subsumption of labour in England through the
framework outlined above; and second, I shall make a few comments on

how this theorisation may help to illuminate the analysis of some contempor-
ary Latin American social formations.
V. ENGLAND AND LATIN AMERICA

Marx stresses that in the history of capitalist production the determination of
the length of the working day is the result of a constant struggle between
capitalists and wage-labourers [1867: 225]. He therefore analyses this strug-
gle in England through its various periods: the extension of the working day
from the middle of the fourteenth century to the end of the seventeenth and
its shortening by the English Factory Acts of 1833 to 1864 [1867: 252-81]. In
this context he states:

The years 1846-47 are epoch-making in the economic history of Eng-
land. The Repeal of the Corn Laws, and of the duties on cotton and
other raw material; free-trade proclaimed as the guiding star of legisla-
tion ; in a word, the arrival of the millennium. On the other hand, in the
same years, the Chartist movement and the 10 hours' agitation reached
their highest point [1867: 268].
The Factory Acts and the Ten Hours' Act which came into force on 1 May
1848 were the outcomes of the struggle to limit the working day which forced
the capitalists to introduce machinery into their enterprises on a systematic
basis. The Corn Laws of 1815 were designed to place tariffs on imports of
corn, in order to avoid competition from cheaper imports, a fact which
enabled the landowners to charge high rents, and obstruct the cheapening of
agricultural products [1865: 626]. In his Speech on the Question of Free
Trade, Marx shows that the capitalists were mainly concerned with cheapen-
ing the price of bread in order to reduce the value of labour-power, and that
despite being aware of this fact, the working class allied itself with capital in
order to destroy landed property [1848a: 457-8]. The repeal of the Corn
Laws in 1846 can be seen to have resulted in the accelerated penetration of
capital into agriculture.
The repeal of the Corn Laws gave a marvellous impulse to English
agriculture. Drainage on the most extensive scale, new methods of
stall-feeding, and of the artificial cultivation of green crops, introduc-
tion of mechanical manuring apparatus, new treatment of clay soils,
increased use of mineral manures, employment of the steam-engine,
and of all kinds of new machinery, more intensive cultivation gener-
ally, characterised this epoch [1867: 632; see also 1865: 680].
In their attack on the Corn Laws and their promotion of Free Trade,
capitalists 'needed the workers to help them to victory. They promised,
therefore, not only a double-sized loaf of bread, but the enactment of the
Ten Hours' Bill in the Free-Trade millennium' [1867: 267]. The struggle for
the repeal of the Corn Laws and the Chartist agitation for the Ten Hours'
Bill can therefore be seen as part of the same process; the process of
transformation to the real subsumption of labour to capital, based on the
extraction of relative surplus-value. The outcome of these struggles assured
the victory of capital over landed property - the victory of a capital-led
process of agricultural development.
One less than evident result of our outline of this process is that a powerful
labour movement is needed to challenge not only capital's reliance on the
extraction of absolute surplus-value, but also indirectly the existence of
landed property. In those cases where landed property manages to control
its own transition, the extraction of absolute surplus-value, along with the
methods of labour control peculiar to it, will tend to be much more deeply
entrenched in the labour process after the real subsumption of labour has
taken place. Hence, extra-repressive methods of social control may be

pronounced and may exist alongside modern industrial forms of organisa-
tion of the labour process and the methods of labour control associated with
it. Thus, once the landlord transition has been completed, these extra-
repressive methods of labour control may be more difficult to resist as the
opposition between landed property and capital no longer exists. Class
struggles will have to be organised on a different basis, and as I previously
noted, in such a situation any attempt to struggle for the nationalisation of
the land, or for the implementation of land reform programs will challenge
capitalist production relations themselves and, hence, capital as a whole.
The balance of class forces will have altered dramatically in favour of capital
and what now constitutes its fraction of landed property.
As I have had occasion to note, several Latin American social formations
(for example, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil) seem to be characterised
by situations where a class of landlords has been in control of the capitalist
'modernisation' of agriculture. In such countries we seem to be faced with a
situation where a landlord-led process of capitalist development has been
practically completed. Indeed, Kay [1981: 487,1980] in particular has forc-
ibly argued that what he terms the 'landlord road to capitalism' is dominant
within Latin American agriculture. The same author suggests that in the case
of Chile this transition was almost completed by 1964 [Kay, 1981: 495].
Whilst agreeing with the general thrust of Kay's argument, it is important, it
seems to me, to provide greater conceptual precision to his analysis, for as I
have suggested above, for example, there is an important difference
between a class of capitalist landowners and a fraction of landowner/farmers
which is not immediately apparent in a notion of 'transition to capitalism'.
In this context it might be useful to dwell for a moment on the historical
experience of Chile, for two main reasons. First, because during the short
period of a decade (1964-73) the country experienced three ostensibly
different processes of transformation of rural social relations founded on
different balances of class forces. Second, because Chile, contrary to other
Latin American countries, never really experienced a powerful peasant
movement before the 1960s, with the result that the above processes of
transformation cannot adequately be accounted for through a historical
analysis of the struggle between landlords and peasants, by considering
agriculture as a self-contained domain.18
It is important to note initially that the Chilean economy was plagued by
inflation from the 1880s onwards with corresponding labour agitation in the
towns against the exhorbitant price of food [Wright, 1973; 1975]. A powerful
labour movement was mobilised and organised around this issue primarily
by left-wing parties to such an extent that the issue of the inflationary price of
food constituted the dominant theme of every election between 1932 and
1964 [Loveman, 1976: 202]. The labour movement was powerful enough to
succeed in acquiring legislation (in 1937 and 1941) which adjusted wages to
the cost of living index which, of course, meant a drain on the profits of
capital. In view of this kind of pressure, and given the theorisation
developed above, it is not surprising that it was in the interests of Chilean

capital to curb the power of landed property [Carriere, 1975]." However,
industrial capital was much weaker in Chile in the 1960s than it was in
England in the 1840s due to the imperialist penetration which blocked its
development. The leading class force behind the capital-led agrarian reform
of 1965-70 was that of the urban petty-bourgeoisie and the rural middle-
peasants (inquilinos) once they had become incorporated into the process.
As far as the agrarian transformation is concerned, Chilean landlords
were capitalist landlords who, under pressure from capital and labour
between 1930 and 1964, were able to control their own transformation into
capitalist farmers with a major reliance on the extraction of surplus-value in
its absolute form. The introduction of relative surplus-value extraction
during this period was slow and largely undertaken by the landlords them-
selves and on their own terms. Between 1965 and 1970 agrarian relations
experienced a process which concluded the transformation of landlords into
capitalist farmers (at a faster rate), while at the same time dramatically
initiating a rich peasant road, which had always been in antagonism to
landlord development but which until then had been completely smothered.
These processes did not transform feudal landlords into capitalist landlords,
but transformed capitalist landlords into capitalist farmers - that is, into a
fraction of capital - a fact which goes some way towards explaining the
resistance of capital as a whole to the land reform policies of Popular Unity
(1971-73). Moreover, since that date, of course, the fraction of landed
capital has re-established its control over Chilean agriculture. Unfortu-
nately the limits of space preclude any further discussion of this important
case. Nevertheless this brief outline is sufficient to point to the necessity, in
the Latin American context anyway, of a theory of the production and
reproduction of a landlord class under capitalism, which would help to
explain the ability of a landowning class to control the process of capitalist
development in agriculture and retard overall accumulation, especially if
compared to a simple account of the persistence of pre-capitalist modes of
production. The argument I have elaborated in this article may point
towards the elements of such an explanation.
Three specific characteristics of the general Latin American context may
be worth noting here. First, in a situation where a more or less sizeable part
of the wage-labour needed to establish the capitalist mode of production was
imported, rather than extracted from domestic agriculture, the separation of
landed property from capital and labour would not systematically take
place. In such a case there would be less pressure to create a specifically
capitalist form of landed property. This was very much the case in the
countries on the east coast of Latin America (Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil).
Throughout Latin American agriculture the fact that large latifundia, run
either by the landlord or his manager, have been the norm, is indicative of
the power of landed property. The landlord/capitalist/wage-labour pattern
which Marx discusses in relation to English agriculture is rare on the subcon-
tinent. The weakness of peasant production in some Latin American coun-
tries (for example, Chile) meant that the pressure to transform landed
property emanated in the main from the 'urban sectors'. Second, the relative
weakness of organised labour in many Latin American countries meant that
pressure was insufficient to reverse the power of landed property. Third,
and most importantly, of course, was the influence of foreign capital's
penetration into Latin American social formations; a fact which contributes
towards accounting for the first two points. The penetration of foreign
capital took different forms through history: those of merchant's capital,
commodity capital and imperialism and finance capital. Whatever its form
the effect of this penetration was generally to block the development of
domestic industrial capital, with the result that the other major source of
antagonism to landed property was weakened. This amounts to saying that
the pressure to cheapen the value of the necessities of life was not always
strong enough to dislodge landed property from its control over agriculture.
This was especially the case in those instances where the cost of reproducing
labour-power was in large measure borne by petty-commodity production.
Imperialist penetration, therefore, contributed to the fact that landed
property was able to resist its abolition. The results were reasonably clear:
This thirst for surplus, its wastage and leakage abroad under depen-
dent capitalism, has in many cases led to the imposition of authorita-
rian military regimes to increase the absolute surplus-value of labour
by reducing the worker's wage and extending his working hours or
intensifying the labour process. Brazil, Chile and Argentina illustrate
the above [Kay, 1981: 487].
The two major attacks of the domestic bourgeoisie/working class/ peasantry
alliance were, of course, the import-substitution policies of the period
following the 1930s and the land reform programmes of the 1960s and 1970s.
Both failed ultimately to defeat the alliance of landed property and imperial-
ism, with the result that landed property was able to control the develop-
ment of capitalism in agriculture and that the antagonistic relation between
capital and landed property has virtually been suppressed. New strategies
based on a different set of class alliances will have to be developed in order to
overcome the new power bloc.
NOTES
1. Of course there is no necessary guarantee that a class of capitalists (for example) neces-
sarily exists in any capitalist social formation. One can have capital without capitalists.
Nevertheless this does not alter the fact that a theorisation of capital in general is strictly
necessary in any particular explanation of specific classes. Some of the reasons for capital-
ism giving rise to a dominant contradiction other than that between capitalists and wage-
labourers have been discussed in the case of 'African Socialism' in P. Gibbon and M.
Neocosmos [1985].
2. I review the major contributions to the debate over Marx's theory of rent in Neocosmos
[1982, Ch.5 appendix]. I argue that both defenders and critics of Marx's theory of rent
conflate essential and phenomenal categories, with the result that they are incapable of
providing coherent account of that theory.
3. Class unities are not simply given by capitalism but are produced by specific practices in
opposition to other classes. For a brief discussion of this point see Gibbon and Neocosmos
[1985], and in connection with the proletariat specifically see Bettelheim [1971].
4. See in this context, for example, Emmanuel [1972: 216-22]; Cutler and Taylor [1972];
Gutelman [1974]; Tribe [1977] and my discussion of these authors and others in Neocosmos
[1982: Ch.5 appendix].
5. By the term 'profit', I am referring here to 'gross profit' and I am ignoring, in order to
simplify the issue, its sub-division into interest and profit of enterprise. Marx suggests that
gross profit is 'the specific characteristic form of surplus-value belonging to the capitalist
mode of production' [1865: 814]. It is for Marx the clearest realised form of surplus-value
under capitalism and constitutes the specific revenue of a class of capitalists [Sayer, 1979:
54].
6. The 'basis' of revenue must not be confused with the 'source' of revenue which, for Marx, is
of course labour.
7. This point is argued in detail in Neocosmos [1982: Part II]. For examples of a relativistic
conception of Marx's theory of rent see Fine [1979; 1980] and Massey and Catalano [1978].
For example of an economistic approach to rent see Cutler and Taylor [1972], Emmanuel
[1972], Rey [1973], Gutelman [1974]. All these authors conflate the basis of landlord
revenue with that revenue itself, and the basis of a landed class (landed property) with
landownership itself.
8. Marx gives a number of reasons for this which are mainly concerned with the level of
science and technology employed in agriculture [1862: 123]. He also argues that in agricul-
ture production time is longer than working time, a fact which lengthens the turnover
period of agricultural capital and means that a smaller amount of surplus-value is created in
agriculture [1863b: 18-21, 1874: Chs.12, 13]. Ultimately of course the slower rate of
development of the productive forces in agriculture is explained by the existence of the
capital/landed property relation.
9. See Marx [1865: 758]. Monopoly rents based on monopoly price are distinguished from
both differential and absolute rent in [1865: 765; 832-3]. Marx also states that the landlord's
so-called 'monopoly' of land is no different from the capitalist's 'monopoly' of the means of
production [1865: 815, 816, 1863b: 94].
10. This needs to be stressed in view of the tendency in recent literature to represent rural
relations not as historical but as somehow 'natural' determined, for instance, by the quality
of land itself, for example, Vergopoulos [1974].
11. It is this independence I would argue, which forms the basis of the phenomenal illusion that
landlords are in a position to create their own rent through a 'natural monopoly' in land.
12. Although for Marx rent is a social law, it appears phenomenally as a law of nature. Just as
capital seems to create interest, technology profit and labour wages, so rent seems to arise
from the land itself [1865: Ch.48, 1863c: addenda].
13. Marx [1865: 627-33] argues that the latter is often the rule in agriculture.
14. This point is made clear in the remark by Marx cited above [28]. See also Lenin [1907a:
296-7]. The fact that land nationalisation does not automatically abolish the capital/landed
property relation follows from the fact that the latter is an essential relation. The point is
similar to the now obvious one that the nationalisation of enterprises does not automati-
cally abolish capitalism. A mere legal measure cannot of itself transform production
relations.
15. It should be recalled as I have noted at the beginning of this article, that Lenin [1905; 1907a]
did not restrict his comments on the effects of the two roads to socio-economic conditions
alone. He was also crucially concerned with their effects on politics and political institu-
tions: bourgeois democracy, different forms of bourgeois state and so on [Gibbon, 1984].
Restrictions of space preclude a discussion of these effects here, so I have preferred to
concentrate on the difference in socio-economic forms engendered by capital-led and
landlord-led development.
16. There is an additional important limit to capital accumulation provided by absolute
surplus-value which concerns the process of realisation on the market. Absolute surplus-
value implies low wages and low levels of consumption. If the working class constitutes also
the market for the commodities produced, production and, hence, accumulation will be
limited by their low levels of consumption. Such a limit is not operative with relative
surplus-value or if the producers are not at the same time the consumers of the commodities
produced as, for example, in the cases of production for consumption by the bourgeoisie
and petty-bourgeoisie, production for export, reproduction of labour power by petty-
commodity production. This argument is developed in Neocosmos [1982: 563-7].
17. Of course increased productivity in agriculture also means greater exploitation of rural
labourers and poor peasants and a more rapid differentiation of the peasantry as Lenin was
aware.
18. I expound these and the following arguments at length in [Neocosmos 1982: Chs.9, 10].
19. Although it is often noted quite correctly that the increase in the internal market resulting
from a land redistribution programme constitutes one of the major incentives for the
industrial bourgeoisie to support such a programme, this is often mistakenly overstressed,
particularly if one bears in mind that a large number of commodities (for example,
agriculture machinery, pesticides and so on) which would be demanded by a capitalising
agriculture are imported in imperialised social formations. This was certainly the case in
Chile [Neocosmos, 1982: 795]. Much more important a factor in the Chilean case was the
pressure to reduce wages.
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Michael Neocosmos, Marx's Third Class - Capitalist Landed Property and Capitalist Development

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Michael Neocosmos, Marx's Third Class - Capitalist Landed Property and Capitalist Development

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Marx's third class: Capitalist

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This article consists of a detailed discussion of Marx's theorisation of

succeed in providing a sophisticated theory of capitalist landed prop-

Here, then, we have all three classes - wage-labourers, industrial

either as a simple description or even as a theorisation of 'agrarian change'

II. PRODUCTION RELATIONS, LANDED PROPERTY AND CAPITALIST AGRI-

accounting for the existence of material 'things' such as 'labour', 'capital'

capital [Neocosmos, 1982: Ch.7].

The Historical Development of Capitalist Landed Property

citly suggests that private property is a necessary condition of commodity

means of production) refers solely to a phenomenal juridical relation and

I shall be concerned here to establish two major points. It should be noted,

duce capital. But the reproduction of capital presupposes the reproduction

profit of enterprises, but to concentrate on gross profit, hence this distinc-

The Basis of the Revenue of a Landed Class

along with, antagonistic capitalist production relations;

labour is lower in agriculture than in industry). Assuming an equal rate of

ever. In actual fact:

will penetrate agriculture, but the extent to which it does, is determined by

III. CLASS OR FRACTION?

Merchant's or 'trading' capital is concentrated in the sphere of circulation,

IV. LANDED PROPERTY AND CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT

visualised as specific instances in the realm of agriculture, of more general

introduction of new techniques, the industrial capitalist will make a tempor-

agriculture characterised by independent landed property constitutes for

nationalised, but it does of necessity imply the suppression of an independent

framework outlined above; and second, I shall make a few comments on

V. ENGLAND AND LATIN AMERICA

this context he states:

taken place. Hence, extra-repressive methods of social control may be

developed above, it is not surprising that it was in the interests of Chilean

Works, Vol.9, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1972.

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