abstinence

…a function and called it abstinence. Karl Marx denied the existence of any such function and argued that the social product must be attributed entirely to acts of labour, capital being merely the embodied labour of the past. On this view, profit and interest are the result of pure exploitation…

…concept of rent, advanced the abstinence theory of profits (which described a reward for abstaining from spending one’s accumulated capital), and led the revolt among the classical economists against the Malthusian theory of population. In his two lectures on population (1829), which were some of the first criticisms of Thomas…