Capital: What It Is and What It Is Not.

Dear Mr. Tucker,— Your comments on my letter in a recent issue call for some response, as it is clear you have not yet got full possesion of the idea you characterise as “unmitigated bosh based on pure chimera.”

Let us pass over the first four and the seventh of your points, for a while, and consider the fifth and the sixth.

You say: “We quite agree with Mr. Smart that ‘accumulated thought and experience are capital,’ but we utterly fail to see why ’things that perish almost as fast as they are produced are not capital!’”

I am glad you admit that “accumulated thought and experience are capital.” You admit, then, that capital is not necessarily material. And you will admit, consequently, that thought and experience (knowledge) — being capital, and being productive — are a force; that, when combined with the simple action of brain and muscle (a purely natural force), they aid the latter, labor, in production. Good!

Now, let us suppose an untutored savage in the wilds of Africa or Australia, who knows just enough to break off a cudgel in the forest to defend himself with or to knock down an animal for food; suppose him carried into civilised lift and taught some useful art by which he can supply himself with previously undreamed-of comforts,— all his capacities developed. From being merely a natural element or organism, possessing dormant or undeveloped capacities and wants, he has now, combined with these, capital, and has become a civilized Man.

Thus far you will agree with me.

Now, let us suppose a piece of uncultivated land in the midst of a jungle, remote from civilization, possessing all kinds of capacity for animal, vegetable, and mineral production, but yielding nothing valuable; suppose a railroad taken in there, axes, ploughs,— in short, all the appliances of civilization. The land will be cleared and fenced and cultivated, and will soon be smiling with abundant crops. From being merely a natural element or organism, possessing dormant or undeveloped capacities and wants, it has now, combined with these, capital, and has become a civilized piece of land,— a farm, or a mine, or a garden.

Now, what difference is there between the two cases? In the one case we have a human savage converted into a civilized man; in the other a land savage converted into a civilized farm.

If the culture invested in the Man is capital, as you admit, why is not the culture invested in Land capital in just the same sense?

And is it not just as proper — or rather, just as improper — to call the material organism, Man, capital, as it is to call the material organism, Land, capital? or any other natural elementary substance, such as wood, stone, coal, or iron; or any animal creature?

Do you not see my meaning? That the productive property or potentiality possessed by any material substance — animate or inanimate — is invested in it, precisely as it is invested in a man’s brain, and is of precisely the same kind. It is capital in the only correct sense of the word; it is stored-up labor in a higher sense than that of the political economists; and neither the man himself, nor the creatures he has civilized, nor the land or things he has civilized are capital.

Have I made this point clear?

As my letter is already long enough for your space, and as I do not wish to confuse this primary question with the other questions included in our discussion, I will leave them for the present.

We are discussing a vital principle,— the corner-stone of Socialism.

W. G. H. Smart.

[Nothing but the above letter was needed to clinch our statement that Mr. Smart’s socialism is an incoherent structure. We print it because we do not wish to be in the least unfair, but we really have not the patience to follow the writer in his absurd hypotheses and indiscriminate analogies. For instance, his statement that “the productive property or potentiality possessed by any material substance” alone is capital, when he has previously supposed no capital to be contained in “a piece of uncultivated land possessing all kinds of capacity for animal, vegetable, and mineral production;” or, his identification of “productive property or potentiality with “stored-up labor,” as if there was no such thing an a natural productive force independent of labor; or, his confusion of man with capital, as if the word capital had not been set apart, in contradistinction to labor, to denote all productive forces and aids to productive forces outside of the laborer, man, and for the express purpose of affording a convenient terminology to be used in discussing the relation of man to wealth; or, finally, his starting out to explain to us why “things that perish almost as fast as they are produced are not capital,” and then making it the conclusion of his letter that capital is stored-up labor and that “neither man himself, nor the creatures he has civilised, nor the land or things he has civilized are capital.” Upon which Mr. Smart asks us if we see his meaning. Well, we frankly confess that we do not, unless he means that men and animals and land are “things that perish almost as fast as they are produced.” But it is useless to ask you, Mr. Smart, what you mean. You probably think that you mean a great deal, but as a matter of fact you do not mean anything at all. You have not the faintest idea of the nature of capital. The A B C of political economy is unfamiliar to you. You have long been an earnest student of the industrial question; you have thoroughly acquainted yourself with many important phases of it; you are constantly saying many good and true and useful things about it; but you have never yet planted yourself upon an intelligible basis, and that is why nobody can ever understand Mr. Smart. — Editor Liberty.]