That is how v. Kirchmann described somewhat clumsily, but on the whole correctly, what is in fact the capitalisation of surplus value, the process of capitalist accumulation, which constitutes the whole significance of saving, advocated by classical economists 'since Adam Smith' with unerring instinct. Declaring war on saving and accumulation was quite in keeping with v. Kirchmann's premises, considering that he, like Sismondi, saw the immediate cause of the crises in accumulation. Here, too, Rodbertus is more 'thorough'. Having learned from Ricardo's theory of value that labour is the source of all value, and consequently of capital, too, he is completely blinded by this elementary piece of knowledge to the entire complexity of capitalist production and capital movements. Since capital is generated by labour, both the accumulation of capital, i.e. 'saving', and the capitalisation of the surplus value are nothing but eyewash. In order to untangle this intricate network of errors by 'economists since Adam Smith', he takes, as we might expect, the example of the 'isolated husbandman' and proves all that he needs by a long-drawn vivisection of the unhappy creature. Here already he discovers 'capital', that is to say, of course, that famous 'original stick' with which 'economists since Adam Smith' have hooked the fruits of a theory of capital from the tree of knowledge. 'Would saving be able to produce this stick?' is his query. And since every normal person will understand that 'saving' cannot produce any stick, that Robinson [Crusoe] must have made it of wood, we have already proved that the 'savings' theory is quite mistaken. Presently, the 'isolated husbandman' hooks a fruit from the tree with the stick, and this fruit is his 'income'. 'If capital were the source of income, already this most elementary and primitive event would have to give evidence of this relation. Would it be true to say, then, without doing violence to facts and concepts, that the stick is a _source_ of income or of part of the income consisting in the fruit brought down? can we trace income, wholly or in part, back to the stick as its _cause_, may we consider it, wholly or in parts, as a _product_ of the stick?'[270]