I am no Ricardian by any stretch of the
imagination but David Ricardo is a significant figure in political economy
particularly with his publication Principles
of Political Economy and Taxation. In this post I am presenting an excerpt
from this seminal work, which has its deficiencies, which speaks of the
accumulation of capital within poor countries. This excerpt is significant
because it does help to explain why some
poor countries find it difficult to accumulate capital. The excerpt is
taken from pages 69-70 of the Prometheus edition. Here it goes:
‘In those countries where there is an abundance of fertile land, but where, from ignorance, indolence, and barbarism
of the inhabitants, they are exposed to all the evils of want and famine, and
where it has been said that population presses against the means of
subsistence, a very different remedy should be applied from that which is necessary
in long settled countries, where, from the diminishing rate of the supply of
raw produce, all the evils of a crowded population are experienced. In the one
case, the evil proceeds from bad government, from the insecurity of property,
and from a want of education in all ranks of the people. To be made happier
they require only to be better governed and instructed [In the bourgeois mode
of production] as the augmentation of capital, beyond the
augmentation of the people, would be the inevitable result. No increase in the
population can be too great, as the powers of production are still greater. In
other cases, the population increases faster than the funds required for its
support. Every exertion of industry, unless accompanied by a diminished rate of
increase in the population, will add to the evil, for production cannot keep
pace with it.
With a
population pressing against the means of subsistence, the only remedies are
either a reduction of people or a more rapid accumulation of capital. In rich
countries, where all the fertile land is already cultivated, the latter remedy
is neither very practicable nor desirable, because its effort would be, if
pushed very far, to render all classes equally poor [rich nations tend to grow
at a slower rate than poor countries in the process of accumulating capital.
Compare the US with annualized growth of 2% and China’s annualized growth of
7.5-8%]. But in poor countries, where there are abundant means of production in
store, from fertile land not yet brought into cultivation, it is the only safe and
efficacious means of removing the evil, particularly as its effect would be to
elevate all classes of the people [this is inaccurate based on bourgeois
principles unless he is advocating the rise in peasant farming which represents
the genesis of capitalist ground rent].
The friends of humanity cannot but
wish that in all countries the laboring classes should have taste for comforts
and enjoyments [while brutally extracting surplus value/unpaid labor time from
them], and that they should be stimulated by all legal means in their exertions [for the bourgeois class] to procure them [this does not happen as a lot are sent
into the ranks of poverty as their labour power becomes increasingly devalued].
There cannot be better security against a superabundant population. In those
countries where the laboring classes have the fewest wants, and are contented
with the cheapest food, the people are exposed to the greatest vicissitudes and
miseries. They have no place to refuge from calamity; they cannot seek safety
in a lower station; they are already so low that they can fall no lower. On any
deficiency of the chief article of their
subsistence there are few substitutes of which they can avail themselves and dearth
to them is attended with almost all the evils of famine.’
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