"Capital."

To return from our digression : When we consider what is usually called capital, we are as much at a loss to disentangle it from land as we are to find land which does not partake of the attributes of capital.

For though capital is commonly defined as wealth produced by human labor, and destined, not for the immediate satisfaction of human wants, but for transformation into, or production of, the means of such satisfaction in the future; yet railways, docks, canals, mines, etc., which are classed as capital among the instruments of production, are really only somewhat elaborate modifications of land. The buildings and the plant with which they are worked are further removed from the form of land, but we lump the lot as capital. All farming improvements, all industrial buildings, all shops, all machinery, raw material, live and dead stock of every kind, are called capital. And just as there is a purely social element in the value of land, so are there purely social elements in the value of capital; and its value, in all its forms, depends upon its accessibility and fitness here and now, and not on the labor it has cost. The New River Company's Water Shares have their present enormous value, not because Sir Hugh Myddleton's venture was costly, but because London has become great. The usefulness of fixed and unchangeable forms of capital increases and decreases through external causes, just as does that of land. If instruments of production must be classified, the best division of them is into immovables and movables; the annual value of buildings, railways, mines, quarries, waterworks, gasworks, durable fixed machinery, and many other forms of so-called capital, manifestly agreeing with that of land in fluctuating according to the causes the effects of which are generalised in the "Law of Rent" of abstract economics.

Besides industrial capital, there is a considerable amount of what has conveniently been called "consumers' capital." Dwelling-houses, and all their domestic machinery and conveniences are as necessary for production as land and factories; for though the worker uses them in his character of consumer, they are necessary to maintain him in efficiency for his work. All private stores of food and clothing, all forms of personal property, may likewise be classed as consumers' capital. It will, however, be evident that, in classing these as capital, the signification of that name is becoming very vague and indefinite.

Finally, we have such purely non-material and social kinds of capital as banking and credit organisations, inventions, and other devices for extending and intensifying our power over Nature; social forces of immense importance for the carrying on of wealth production, largely capable of social ownership, not entirely capable of private monopoly, but at present appropriated by some individuals more than by others.