Capital & Earnings

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Capital and Its Earnings

John B. Clark

Source: Publications of the American Economic Association, Vol. 3, No. 2 (May, 1888)

In the language of business the word capital stands for a single, clear conception; in the language of economic science it stands for two unlike conceptions, and is unconsciously applied now to the one and now to the other. Scientific analysis has been baffled by this fact, and many logomachies have been occasioned by it. Socialism draws its intellectual supplies from a vitiated pool the disturbing element of which is this shifting conception of capital.