The Poverty of Philosophy

XXII

received to consume; a series of economically unproductive but necessary functions must always be sustained out of the produced fund, and thus the people concerned must also be maintained. This is only correct as long as the current division of labor remains in effect. In a society with an obligation to universal productive labor, which is surely “conceivable,” this requirement disappears. However, the necessity for a social reserve and accumulation fund would remain, and therefore, even then, while the workers—that is, everyone—would remain in possession and enjoyment of their total product, not every individual would enjoy his “full labor return.” The maintenance of economically unproductive functions from the product of labor has not been overlooked by the other labor-money utopians either. But they let the workers tax themselves for this purpose through standard democratic means, while Rodbertus, whose entire social reform of 1842 is tailored to the Prussian state of that time, places the whole matter in the discretion of the bureaucracy, which determines the worker’s share of his own product from above and grants it as a favor.

Second, however, ground rent and profit are also to continue undiminished. For landowners and industrial capitalists also perform certain socially useful or even necessary, albeit economically unproductive, functions, and receive a salary for this in the form of ground rent and profit—a view that was famously not at all new even in 1842. Actually, they receive far too much now for the little they do, and perform it poorly enough at that, but Rodbertus has decided, at least for the next 500 years, that a