Page:The Evolution of Modern Capitalism.djvu/25

4 THE EVOLUTION OF

If we seek the actual origins of these early accumulations we run them “to earth” in rents of agricultural and city lands, in the working of mines, and the discovery or pillage of ancient treasures of the East. In the Middle Ages the home trade and the industrial crafts were never anything else than means of “livelihood,” their scale and the conditions under which they were conducted furnishing no scope for considerable accumulations. Though in the later periods of the Middle Ages large profits were made out of Colonial trade and money-lending, these processes implied the pre-existence of large accumulations which were essential to their operations; moreover, further analysis of Colonial trade and money-lending drive down to labour on the land as the prime source of their profits. § 3. The historical foundation of capitalism is rent, the product of labour upon land over and above what is requisite to maintain the labourers; this surplus accrues by political or economic force to the king, feudal superior, or landowner, and can be consumed or stored by him.

By taxes and tolls, fines, rents, or even by voluntary contri- butions, the king, the Church, the landlord, was able to draw from the cultivation of the land the surplus product of the more fertile soil, and most of the increment of the productivity of agriculture due to improved methods of cultivation. Systems of taxation and of land tenure were evolved in order to extract as much as possible of these natural surpluses for the benefit of the political or economic superior. ‘This power, however, to draw from the cultivators a large amount of the produce, though conferring on the landowner or feudal superior a large command over surplus wealth for his personal consumption and that of a body of idle retainers, would not in itself enable him to accumulate, for the wealth he thus received would consist almost wholly of perishable goods; even the forced labour he sometimes extorted in lieu of produce was of necessity applied chiefly to the production of buildings, roads, bridges, etc., which, though of more permanent utility, could contribute little to such accumulation as is required for capitalism.

To the surplus product of agriculture must be added the rents of town lands. ‘Though the small town trader or craftsman under primitive conditions was seldom able to inake sufficient savings out of his profits to become even a