Which quote?

referring to the opening lines to marx's "rent of land": https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts...

Unless I’m mistaken, that refers to farmland and not developed housing. The opening words describe harvesting keep, fish, and animal husbandry. It seems to be decrying the fact that rent can be charged for a field of wheat, where nature did the work.

If there’s housing on that property, then that is something that was developed by the (current or previous) landlord for direct use by the tenant.

However, I’m unfamiliar with this work, so if a different conclusion is drawn elsewhere it would be interesting to read.

In metro areas of most concern, the cost of the house is almost always a pittance relative to the cost of the land the house sits on. The value of that land rarely having been accrued as the result of the landlord's actions.

don't overlook the first line by smith which i originally intended to highlight: "Landlords' right has its origin in robbery."

in effect, from smith's early draft of "the wealth of nations" (~1763): "In a Civilized Society the poor provide both for themselves and for the enormous luxury of their Superiors. [...] [T]hose who labour most get least."

which calls for that staggering question by spinoza: "Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?" deleuze & guattari following: "the astonishing thing is not that some people steal or that others occasionally go out on strike, but rather that all those who are starving do not steal as a regular practice, and all those who are exploited are not continually out on strike"

Isn't Adam Smith referring to feudal lords who fed/clothed their subjects and led them into war with their neighboring lords? That's not at all similar to landlords today.

in some sense, landlords are feudal lords

I don't think your average mom and pop landlord is leading their tenants into battle with the Airbnb down the street, or anything close to that.

more so the idea that you work and then pay them tribute in order to live and survive in a space they "own"

You mean the one where he says that landlords (in the feudal sense, to be fair) are the only class in society which features the combination of the wits to recognize their own interests and interests aligned with the general interests of society, unlike both the mercantile (what we might now call capitalist) class, who knew their interests but whose interests were at odds with the broader society, and the laboring classes whose interests were the general interests, but who were too dull to know them and too easily misled by others?

Or some other Adam Smith quote?