But in the face of this theory, or rather this fiction,
of the productivity of capital, arises another thesis no less
certain, which in these latter days has struck the ablest
economists: it is that all value is born of labor, and is
composed essentially of wages; in other words, that no wealth has
its origin in privilege, or acquires any value except through
work; and that, consequently, labor alone is the source of
revenue among men. How, then, reconcile the theory of farm-rent
or productivity of capital--a theory confirmed by universal
custom, which conservative political economy is forced to accept
but cannot justify--with this other theory which shows that value
is normally composed of wages, and which inevitably ends, as we
shall demonstrate, in an equality in society between net product
and raw product?
The socialists have not wasted the opportunity. Starting with
the principle that labor is the source of all income, they began
to call the holders of capital to account for their farm-rents
and emoluments; and, as the economists won the first victory by
generalizing under a common expression farm-rent and usury, so
the socialists have taken their revenge by causing the seignorial
rights of capital to vanish before the still more general
principle of labor.
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