and Radicals, like Cobbett, argued themselves into tempestuous incoherence, whilst lesser men, like certain of the Chartist leaders, decorated their speeches with phrases culled from the writings of their betters, and perorated in pæans of praise upon the virtues of the producers of all wealth, and in torrents of vituperation upon the robbers who stole it from them.
Thomas Hodgskin was the first of the popular writers to take advantage of Ricardo's work. Ricardian economics had been the stand-by of the employers in the Trade Union controversy of 1824–25. Their argument, put briefly, was: high wages, low profits; low profits, slow accumulation of capital; slower accumulation, less capital; less capital, diminished demand for labour; diminished demand for labour, collapse of wages; hence poverty, distress, privation at work to redress the balance upset by high wages and large families. Therefore all depended upon keeping up rate of profits. This constituted the claim of capital to a share of the produce of industry. It was this claim which Hodgskin proceeded to refute in his famous little pamphlet, called Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital, or the Unproductiveness of Capital Proved (1825).
The argument commences with a statement of Ricardo's definitions. Commodities are produced by the united application of Labour, Capital, and Land, and are divided between the owners of these. The share of the landlord is rent, but as rent is merely a surplus of the fertile over the less fertile land, it cannot keep the labourer poor. The share of the labourer is that quantity necessary to enable the labourers one with another to subsist and perpetuate their race without either increase or diminution. The share of capital is all that remains after the landlord's surplus and this bare subsistence of the labourer have been deducted. On what grounds does Capital claim this large share? McCulloch replies that Capital enables us to execute work that could not otherwise be performed: it saves labour and it enables us to produce things better and more expeditiously. Mill says that Capital supplies the labourer with tools and raw materials. For this the owner expects a reward. Capital is also an agent combining with labour to produce commodities. Further, the capitalist saves and accumulates more capital upon which Labour depends. For all this Capital deserves reward. Hodgskin proceeds to examine these ideas.
The goods which are given to the labourer to maintain him until his wares are brought to market are not the result of
