Previous quotations have already shown that Rodbertus thinks solely of simple commodity production, quite in keeping with his mistaken doctrine that the purpose of capitalist production is the manufacture of consumer goods for the satisfaction of 'human wants'. For he always talks of 'capital replacements', of the need to enable the capitalists to 'continue their enterprise on the previous scale'. His principal argument, however, is directly opposed to the accumulation of capital. To fix the rate of the surplus value, to prevent its growth, is tantamount to paralysing the accumulation of capital. Both Sismondi and v. Kirchmann had recognised the problem of balancing production and consumption to be indeed a problem of accumulation, that is to say of enlarged capitalist reproduction. Both traced the disturbances in the equilibrium of reproduction to accumulative tendencies denying the possibility of accumulation, with the only difference that the one recommended a damper on the productive forces as a remedy, while the other favoured their increasing employment to produce luxuries, the entire surplus value to be consumed. In this field, too, Rodbertus follows his own solitary path. The others might try with more or less success to comprehend the _fact_ of capitalist accumulation, but Rodbertus prefers to fight the very concept. 'Economists since Adam Smith have one after the other echoed the principle, setting it up as a universal and absolute truth, that capital could only come about by saving and accumulating.'[268] Rodbertus is up in arms against this 'deluded judgment'. Over sixty pages of print he sets out in detail that (_a_) it is not saving which is the source of capital but labour, that (_b_) the economists' 'delusion' about 'saving' hails from the extravagant view that capital is itself productive, and that (_c_) this delusion is ultimately due to another: the error that capital is--capital. v. Kirchmann for his part understood quite well what is at the bottom of capitalist 'savings'. He had the pretty argument: 'Everyone knows that the accumulation of capital is not a mere hoarding of reserves, an amassing of metal and monies to remain idle in the owners' vaults. Those who want to save do it for the sake of re-employing their savings either personally or through the agency of others as capital, in order to yield them revenue. That is only possible if these capitals are used in new enterprises which can produce so as to provide the required interest. One may build a ship, another a barn, a third may reclaim a desolate swamp, a fourth may order a new spinning frame, while a fifth, in order to enlarge his shoe-making business, would buy more leather and employ more hands--and so on. Only if the capital that has been saved is employed in this way, can it yield interest (meaning profit), and the latter is the ultimate object of all saving.'[269]