THAT land is only a passive factor in
production must be carefully kept in mind. . . . Land cannot
act, it can only be acted upon. . . . Nor is this principle
changed or avoided when we use the word land as expressive
of the people who own land. . . .
That the persons whom we call landowners may contribute
their labor or their capital to production is of course
true, but that they should contribute to production as
landowners, and by virtue of that ownership, is as
ridiculously impossible as that the belief of a lunatic in
his ownership of the moon should be the cause of her
brilliancy.
— The
Science of Political Economy
unabridged: Book III, Chapter
15, The Production of Wealth: The First Factor of
Production — Land
But that land is only a passive factor in production must be carefully kept in mind. It is a thing, not a person, and though the tendency to personification leads not merely in poetry but in common speech to the use of phrases which attribute sentiment and action to land, it is important to remember that when we speak of a smiling, a sullen, or an angry landscape, or of the Earth giving or the Earth receiving, or of nature tempting or forbidding, we are merely using figures of speech more forcibly or more gracefully to express our own feelings by reflection from inanimate objects. In the production of wealth land cannot act; it can only be acted upon.
Nor is this principle changed or avoided when we use the word land as expressive of the people who own land. Landowners, as landowners, take no part in production whatever. Land cannot know whether men regard it as property or not, nor does that fact in any degree affect its powers. Sand is sand and gold is gold, and the rain falls and the sun shines, as little affected by the moral considerations that men recognize as the telegraph-wire is affected by the meaning of the messages that pass through it, or as the rock is affected by the twitter of the birds that fly over it.
I speak of this because although their definition of land as a factor in production is precisely that which I have given, there is to be found in the accepted treatises on political economy a constant tendency to the assumption that landowners, through their ownership of land, contribute to production.
That the persons whom we call landowners may contribute their labor or their capital to production is of course true, but that they should contribute to production as landowners, by virtue of that ownership, is as ridiculously impossible as that the belief of a lunatic in his ownership of the moon should be the cause of her brilliancy.
abridged: Part III, Chapter 10: Order of the Three Factors of Production
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