...Roy H. Grieve In a recent paper Terry Peach argues that Adam Smith found no reason to limit application of the labor-embodied theory of value to the early and rude state of society. According to Peach, Smith—having found a problem in employing the labor-commanded measure of value in the case...

... and work to be done) that underlie Smith’s own system of thought. The article closes with a reappraisal of the principle of value as command of labor as work to be done in the economy as a whole and of Smith’s vision of a permanent increase in the natural price of labor (in Smith’s rather than in Ricardo’s...

... if labor-embodied was the same as labor-commanded implying that the situation in the commercial society corresponds to that of the early and rude state With the price or value of an individual commodity equated by Grieve with the value of the labor [that is, wages, for Grieve] employed in its...

... by Duke University Press 2009 Bladen, V. W. 1975 . Command over Labour: A Study in Misinterpretation. Canadian Journal of Economics 8.4 : 504 –19. Bowley, M. 1973 . Studies in the History of Economic Theory before 1870 . London: Macmillan. Dobb, M. 1973 . Theories of Value...

.... ____. 2000 . The Labor “Embodied” in Smith's Labor-Commanded Measure: A “Rationally Reconstructed”Legend. Journal of the History of Economic Thought 22 , forthcoming. Hume, David. [1752] 1970 . Writings on Economics. Edited by Eugene Rotwein. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Hutcheson...

... “for the lordly servitude of a court” (TMS I.iii.2.1, I.iii.2.7). Peach / Smith’s “Real Measure of Exchangeable Value”  411 ers) who could have been supported (LJA i.116–17, iv.22–22, iv.45) is indicative of one of the several additional uses to which he would later put his labor (commanded...

... and execute and verify calculations, most notably for his tableaux économiques . In other words, the production of political and economic writings was structured by a detailed division of labor organized by Quesnay, who acted as the master of a writing workshop. After the death of Madame de Pompadour...

... of labour gradually fall; yet it is clear that there is a limit, and probably at no great distance, which cannot be passed. The command of a certain quantity of food is absolutely necessary to the labourer in order to support himself, and such a family as will maintain merely a stationary...

... it could purchase, like Malthus ’ ‘‘ labor command ’’ or Keynes ’s ‘‘ labor units ’’ : Wages do not represent an absolute quantity of labor, but only a quantity of subsistence which sufficed to support the workers in the previous year. Tlhe same quantity of subsistence will put...

...” categories include indices of welfare and productivity which are used for such comparisons over time and across nations. Smith, as noted, is also interested in measuring a nation’s potential for economic growth. One use for his labor-commanding value standard is to measure progress towards...

... and the jurisprudence of property is found in Smith’s theory of labor commanded, wherein Smith proposes to mea- sure value in terms of the power of the possessor over the labor of others (WN 1.5.1-3). Pier Luigi Porta (1 989), for example, has explored this as an important connection between these two...

... in a commodity and the labour commanded by it in market exchange. All these elements in Smith’s thinking pointed towards the notion that the surplus labour performed by the producers was the source of the capitalist’s profit, and hence also the source of rent, interest, and other non-wage incomes...

..., that labour-employed is not a satisfactory measure of value, but at the same time he pointed to weaknesses in Malthus’ case for labour- commanded as a measure of value. For example, Malthus had claimed that labour-commanded is the best measure of value because the value of labour is!, of all exchange...

.... The discussion in the footnote on pp. 317-19 of Torrens’ idea that costs of production can be rep- resented by quarters of corn and suits of clothing also occurs in An Elementary Treatise, pp. 109-10, and the idea that labour commanded is “the only standard of the real value of every thing...

.... 4. Ibid., 15 (May 1821): 450. 5. Ibid., 17 (Feb. 1822): 140-41. 372 HISTORY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY Thomas Malthus was the next to attack Ricardo’s value theory. In his Quarterly Review articles of April 1823 and January 1824 he contends that labor-commanded, not labor-embodied...

..., or the amount of labor that the good can command when exchanged in the marketplace. Smith adopted neither the “labor-embodied” nor the “labor-command” view of value because of the difficulties they posed. For one thing, the labor-embodied notion of value can only apply to a crude economy before...

.... 1989 . Adam Smith and Albert Einstein: The Aesthetic Principle of Truth. History of Economics Society Bulletin 11 . 2 : 222 -37. Khalil , E. L. 1991 . Adam Smith's Concept of Labor-Commanded: A Study in Misinterpretation. New York Economic Review 21 . 2 : 34 -49. Khalil , E. L...

...., Mnrx and Engels on Malthus (New York, 1954). I I. Capital I: 676 n. 12. TSV 111: 119. King * Marx as historian 385 gressing to the Mercantilist fallacy of “profit upon alienation’’ (p. 16) and for erroneously adopting Adam Smith’s “labour commanded...

... save him from expending himself. In other words, owing to the division of labor, Smith switches from labor- embodied to labor-command value theory (pp. 30-3 Smith then subdivides the labor which is commanded into “pro- ductive” and “unproductive .” Prodiictii’e labor is lcibor \t*hic...

... not reject the labor theory of value, but rather (just) failed to reach it, mainly because of the baneful effect of his mistaken use of the labor-commanded measure of value. Smith (and Marx) knew that in a developed market system, prices are not proportional to embodied la- bor. What Meek had to maintain...