What he got from Hegel in a mystical form found an economic expression in Ricardo and the anti-capitalist school. Ricardo's writings, which belong to the second decade of the nineteenth century and which formulate, in the guise of a system of economics, the antagonisms and the conflicts between industry and landed nobility, presented themselves as a practical demonstration of the validity of dialectic. The fundamental idea of Ricardo's system may be expressed as follows: Capital is the motive force of society and the creator of civilisation, but the fruits of its activity are enjoyed not by capital but by the landed nobility. That is the thesis; now for the proof. The value of all commodities which can be made in any quantity desired consists in the quantity of labour which is expended for the purpose of producing them. The value is expressed in the costs of production, the most important components of which are wages and profit. Wages and profit stand in opposition to one another: if wages rise, profit falls, and conversely. Wages consist in a definite quantity of the necessaries of life, sufficient to keep the worker effective. Wages must obviously rise whenever the cost of living rises. The facts show that this is actually the case. The following reasons make this clear. In consequence of the civilising effects of capital, there is an increase in the opportunities for work and in population, resulting in an increased demand for the necessaries of life. Agriculture must be extended, but agricultural land is limited and of varying quality. The extension of agriculture brings into use the inferior kinds of land, which demand a greater amount of labour for their cultivation. And as the amount of labour determines the value of the commodity, the cost of living increases, and there is a rapid rise in ground rents. The workers demand higher wages, whereby the profits of the employers are diminished. But there is still another circumstance to be taken into consideration. Whereas the prices of agricultural products rise, those of industrial products fall, since, in consequence of the invention of machinery and of the superior division of labour, smaller quantities of labour are required to produce manufactured goods. The result of the entire working of capital for the civilised community is accordingly the reduction of profits, the depreciation of capital, and the increase of wages. This latter, however, is of no advantage to the workers, for food prices rise higher and higher; on the contrary, the whole advantage falls to the landed nobility, who do nothing for the furtherance of civilisation, but who, through ground rents and protective tariffs, receive everything. We have, then, in Ricardo a system of economic contradictions between profit, wages, and rent, or between bourgeoisie, proletariat, and nobility, in which the antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat is still undeveloped.