It must be distinguished, whether the rent springs from a monopoly price,
 because a monopoly price of the product or the land exists independently of it,
 or whether the products are sold at a monopoly price, because a rent exists.
 When we refer to a monopoly price, we mean in general a price determined only
 by the purchasers' eagerness to buy and ability to pay, independent of the
 price determined by the general price of production, as well as by the value of
 the products. A vineyard producing wine of very extraordinary quality which can
 be produced only in relatively small quantities yields a monopoly price. The
 wine-grower would realise a considerable surplus-profit from this monopoly
 price, whose excess over the value of the product would be wholly determined by
 the means and fondness of the discriminating wine-drinker. This surplus-profit,
 which accrues from a monopoly price, is converted into rent and in this form
 falls into the lap of the landlord, thanks to his title to this piece of the
 globe endowed with singular properties. Here, then, the monopoly price creates
 the rent. On the other hand, the rent would create a monopoly price if grain
 were sold not merely above its price of production, but also above its value,
 owing to the limits set by landed property to the investment of capital in
 uncultivated land without payment of rent. That it is only the title of a
 number of persons to the possession of the globe enabling them to appropriate
 to themselves as tribute a portion of the surplus-labour of society and
 furthermore to a constantly increasing extent with the development of
 production, is concealed by the fact that the capitalised rent, i.e., precisely
 this capitalised tribute, appears as the price of land, which may therefore be
 sold like any other article of commerce. The buyer, therefore, does not feel
 that his title to the rent is obtained gratis, and without the labour, risk,
 and spirit of enterprise of the capitalist, but rather that he has paid for it
 with an equivalent. To the buyer, as previously indicated, the rent appears
 merely as interest on the capital with which he has purchased the land and
 consequently his title to the rent. In the same way, the slave-holder considers
 a Negro, whom he has purchased, as his property, not because the institution of
 slavery as such entitles him to that Negro, but because he has acquired him
 like any other commodity, through sale and purchase. But the title itself is
 simply transferred, and not created by the sale. The title must exist before it
 can be sold, and a series of sales can no more create this title through
 continued repetition than a single sale can. What created it in the first place
 were the production relations. As soon as these have reached a point where they
 must shed their skin, the material source of the title, justified economically
 and historically and arising from the process which creates social life, falls
 by the wayside, along with all transactions based upon it. From the standpoint
 of a higher economic form of society, private ownership of the globe by single
 individuals will appear quite as absurd as private ownership of one man by
 another. Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing
 societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its
 possessors, its usufructuaries, and, like boni patres familias, they
 must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition.