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Johann Karl Rodbertus (August 12, 1805,
Greifswald Greifswald (), officially the University and Hanseatic City of Greifswald (german: Universitäts- und Hansestadt Greifswald, Low German: ''Griepswoold'') is the fourth-largest city in the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania after Rosto ...
,
Swedish Pomerania Swedish Pomerania ( sv, Svenska Pommern; german: Schwedisch-Pommern) was a dominion under the Swedish Crown from 1630 to 1815 on what is now the Baltic coast of Germany and Poland. Following the Polish War and the Thirty Years' War, Sweden held ...
– December 6, 1875, Jagetzow), also known as Karl Rodbertus-Jagetzow, was a German economist and socialist and a leading member of the ''Linkes Zentrum'' (centre-left) in the Prussian national assembly. He defended the
labor theory of value The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of " socially necessary labor" required to produce it. The LTV is usually associated with Marxian ...
as well as the view, as an inference from that, that interest or profit is theft. He believed that capitalist economies tend toward
overproduction In economics, overproduction, oversupply, excess of supply or glut refers to excess of supply over demand of products being offered to the market. This leads to lower prices and/or unsold goods along with the possibility of unemployment. The d ...
.


Biography

Rodbertus was also known as "Rodbertus-Jagetzow" from the name of the estate of Jagetzow, in
Pomerania Pomerania ( pl, Pomorze; german: Pommern; Kashubian: ''Pòmòrskô''; sv, Pommern) is a historical region on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea in Central Europe, split between Poland and Germany. The western part of Pomerania belongs to ...
, which he bought in 1835. Rodbertus was the son of a professor of law, and himself studied law at
Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911. General information The ori ...
and Berlin. From these studies he went on to
Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German: ') is a city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914, of which roughly a quarter consisted of students ...
, where he took up philosophy. He travelled extensively in the
Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
, France, and
Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
before returning to settle down on his newly purchased estate (Jagetzow).G.D.H. Cole (1960), p.20 He served from 1827 to 1832 in the
Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an e ...
n justiciary. By 1837, he had formulated his social platform, and in that year published ''Die Forderungen der arbeitenden Klassen''. Elected to the
National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the r ...
in 1848, he was Minister of Education in the Auerswald- Hansemann ministry for a fortnight, and in 1849 was a leader of the centre-left. The last twenty years of his life were spent in retirement.


Theories

Socialism, as defined by Rodbertus, was to be a gradual evolution, hence his acquiescence in a monarchy, and his break with the Democrats as a political party. He regarded the social question as a purely economic one. His principal doctrines are these: The workman's share of the nation's industrial income tends constantly to decline; land rent and interest are the result of the exploitation of the working classes; the present shares in the distribution of wealth (rent, profits, interest, and wages) are not entirely the result of permanent, universal economic forces, but the result of historical evolution and the prevailing legal system; financial and commercial crises are due to a non-adjustment of production and consumption; the laborer's purchasing power is small and the capitalist and landlord classes, instead of increasing their consumption of luxuries, invest their savings in new factories, and in otherwise increasing the
means of production The means of production is a term which describes land, labor and capital that can be used to produce products (such as goods or services); however, the term can also refer to anything that is used to produce products. It can also be used as a ...
, with the inevitable result that commodities of common consumption are produced in excess. Rodbertus stated the Labor Theory of Value as three connected propositions. First, only those goods that result from labor may be thought to be economic goods; other goods, like sunlight, which do not result from labor are natural goods and consequently have nothing to do with economics. Second, an economic good is solely the product of the labor; any other view of it is to be left to physicists. No part of the value of grain, for example, is to be attributed to sunshine or soil. Third, economic goods are products of the labor that went into their composition and the labor that created the instruments that enabled that production. The value of grain, for example, is not to be found merely in the ploughman but also in the work of those who manufactured the
plough A plough or plow ( US; both ) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses, but in modern farms are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden, iron or ...
.
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk Eugen Ritter von Böhm-Bawerk (; born Eugen Böhm, 12 February 185127 August 1914) was an Austrian economist who made important contributions to the development of the Austrian School of Economics and neoclassical economics. He served intermittent ...
thought that Rodbertus' exposition of the exploitation theory was superior to that of
Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
in profundity and coherence. However, Böhm-Bawerk published his Capital and Interest, where he made his poignant criticism of the theory of exploitation and the labor theory of value on which it is founded, in 1890, several years before the publication of Volume III of Capital (most of which was written in the 1860s). There, Marx eliminates his simplifying assumption of Volume I that in capitalism commodities tend to exchange according to their 'values' (i.e., labor-values). Without Volume III it is not possible to have the complete picture of Marx's theory of capitalism and, in particular, his theory that commodities exchanged according to their 'production prices', which deviated systematically from their 'values', or according to 'modified prices of production' if capitalists had to pay rent to landowners. For Marx, commodities tended to exchange according to their 'values' only in non-capitalist (or 'simple') commodity production in which there is no wage labor (only independent producers) and land is freely available. Nevertheless, he used his sophisticated labor theory of 'value' for the construction of his theory of
surplus-value In Marxian economics, surplus value is the difference between the amount raised through a sale of a product and the amount it cost to the owner of that product to manufacture it: i.e. the amount raised through sale of the product minus the cost ...
(which was his theory of exploitation). This was the 'esoteric' part of his theory, which underlaid the 'exoteric' part that explained equilibrium prices, wages, and rents. The global surplus-value produced was for him the foundation for profits on capital and rents on land. Böhm-Bawerk considered the labor theory of value fallacious, since it could only be valid in special cases. For example, he argued against Rodbertus that a nugget of gold that falls to earth embedded in a meteorite, and thus not having been produced by labor, would still fall within the purview of economic science.


Works

* ''Die Forderungen der arbeitenden Klassen'' (The claims of the working classes, 1837) * ''Zur Erkenntnis unserer staatswirthschaftlichen Zustände'' (Toward an appreciation of our economic circumstances, 1842) * ''Soziale Briefe'', addressed to Julius von Kirchmann (1850–51) * ''Der Normalarbeitstag'' (The standard work day, 1871) * ''Beleuchtung der socialen Frage'' (Some light on social questions, 1875) The statement of his theory of crises, contained in his ''Soziale Briefe'', has appeared in an English translation under the title of ''Overproduction and Crises'' (New York, 1898).


See also

* Karl Marlo


References


External links


Johann Karl Rodbertus Archive
at
marxists.org Marxists Internet Archive (also known as MIA or Marxists.org) is a non-profit online encyclopedia that hosts a multilingual library (created in 1990) of the works of communist, anarchist, and socialist writers, such as Karl Marx, Friedrich En ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rodbertus, Johann Karl 1805 births 1875 deaths People from Greifswald People from Swedish Pomerania German socialists Education ministers of Prussia Member of the Prussian National Assembly German economists Heidelberg University alumni Humboldt University of Berlin alumni University of Göttingen alumni