Parasitic Wealth; Or, Money Reform. a Manifesto to the People of the United States and to the Workers of the Whole World (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Before proceeding with the further discussion of the subject, a few words of explanation in regard to economic terms and factors will be necessary to make our meaning clear. All wealth is the offspring of human effort exerted on the materials of the earth. All human effort, whether physical or mental, is work. If in deference to the terms used by Political Economists we call human effort in its broad sense "Labor,''then Wealth is the offspring of "Land" and "Labor." Only in its expanded sense will the term "Labor" be employed. Commerce is the exchange of the products of labor that is, of forms of wealth; and Industry is the creation of new wealth. Primitive commerce and industry were conducted by the wasteful and unsatisfactory method of barter. They were the clumsy inefficient methods of barbarism. When money came into use, civilization was born, and money became the third factor of productive effort. Land, labor and money constitute the economic trinity. The writer is conscious of uttering a most "dangerous" economic "heresy" in proclaiming money as a prime factor of production; it marks his departure from prevailing opinions. The usual classification in our text books on Political Science, is Land, Labor and Capital, with a fourth factor sometimes added as "business ability." Business ability being a form of human effort, is simply a differential of Labor and may be ignored. The word "Capital" implies two very separate and distinct things, and is therefore the source of much confusion of thought. "Capital," in the sense of wealth is a product and not a factor. It is the offspring of Land, Labor and Money. "Capital" when used in the sense of money is a true factor of production and only in that sense can it be so understood. We are now concerned with m...