The Internal Contradiction of Land Rent and Young Engels’ Critical Theory of Private Ownership

Abstract

Young Engels’ understanding of land rent in Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy is mainly influenced by Adam Smith’s theory of land rent. He has not yet realized the theoretical growth space of David Ricardo’s theory of differential land rent in the dimension of social history. But he has begun to attempt to integrate Adam Smith’s and David Ricardo’s land rent theories and reconstruct them under the premise of criticism of private ownership. Young Engels revealed the inherent contradiction of land possession under the condition of private ownership and the elaboration of land rent returning to the land itself, which indicated that his understanding of land rent at that time had been at the forefront of the left-wing theoretical circles.