6 SOCIAL SCIENTIST enriches himself/herself at the expense of another, the aggregate of asset-owners cannot be enriched by this process. But obviously, a particular aggregate, e.g., the asset-owners of a particular country, or the asset-owners of a particular set of countries which constitute the advanced capitalist world, can enrich themselves by this process. In retrospect one cannot but regret Marx's decision to have left this phenomenon out of reckoning, since it is an extremely important real-life phenomenon: capitalism does not hold exclusive sway over the world, as Rosa Luxemburg emphasised later,4 and is also characterised by uneven strengths of capitalists belonging to different countries; enrichment through this second way at the expense of petty-producers or smaller capitalists is therefore not only possible but actually occurs. And if these dispossessed producers belong to distant lands, e.g., the backward countries, this fact does not even have the adverse repercussions for social and political stability of capitalism in its home base that a dispossession of similar producers domestically would have had. Now, it seems to me that the section of capitalists who hold title-claims or loan claims against physical assets without having to preside over the actual operation of these assets, i.e., the section of capitalists that are referred to as "rentiers" have a particular preference for enrichment through this second avenue. The reason for this is quite simple: the level of aggregate demand, and hence output, in society depends upon the level of investment. For a number of reasons however expanding output tends to generate, except in the midst of major depressions, an upward pressure on prices. First, there are certain commodities, notably primary commodities, whose output is sluggish to respond to demand. Secondly, even among manufactured goods, whose output in principle can respond rapidly to demand if unutilised productive capacities and unemployed workers exist, such capacities may not be there in particular sectors. Thirdly, as output expands and the rate of unemployment falls, the bargaining power of the workers improves and they are able to enforce higher money-wages in a bid to raise their share of output. Typically, they are not able to obtain a higher share of output since the capitalists hike their prices correspondingly through implicit collusion among themselves. But what the process does mean is a higher rate of inflation as the unemployment rate falls. Inflation, however, is to the disadvantage of the rentiers. As is well-known, in a period of inflation the creditors lose and the debtors gain; the rentiers being creditors are among the losers. No doubt, if the interest rate on loans is fully inflation-indexed, they would be able to avoid this loss (such inflation-indexing of the interest rate has happened in the past), but full inflation-indexing is not altogether practical. By contrast, obtaining control over other peoples' assets "for a song" does not require the context of a boom with its attendant price-