II. The Rate of Productivity of the Additional Capitals Decreases. - Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volume III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole [1894]
Edition used:
Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volume III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole, by Karl Marx. Ed. Federick Engels. Trans. from the 1st German edition by Ernest Untermann (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Co. Cooperative, 1909).
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II. The Rate of Productivity of the Additional Capitals Decreases.
This does not carry anything new into the problem, in so far as the price of production may also fall in this case as in the previously considered one, when additional investments of capital upon better soils than A make the product of A superfluous and withdraw the capital from A, or lead to the employment of A for the production of other things. We have analysed this eventuality exhaustively. We have shown that in this case the rent in grain and money per acre may increase, decrease, or remain unchanged.
For the purpose of easy comparison we reproduce
Now let us assume that the figure of 16 quarters, supplied by B, C, D, with a decreasing rate of productivity, suffices to throw A out of cultivation. In that case Table III is transformed into the following
Here the rate of productivity of the additional capitals is decreasing, and the decrease is different upon different soils, while the regulating price of production has fallen from 3 pounds sterling to 1 5/7 pounds sterling. The investment of capital has risen by one-half, from 10 pounds sterling to 15 pounds sterling. The money rent has fallen by almost one-half, from 18 pounds sterling to 9 3/7 pounds sterling, while the grain rent has fallen only by one-twelfth, from 6 quarters to 5½ quarters. The total product has risen from 10 to 16, or by 160%. The grain rent constitutes a little more than one-third of the total product. The advanced capital has a ratio of 15 to 9 8/7 to the money rent, whereas formerly this ratio was 10 to 18.