Labour theory of value

Fernando Vianello

pp. 233-246

in: John Eatwell, Murray Milgate, Peter Newman (eds), Marxian economics, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1990

Abstract

The only instance in which Adam Smith makes the value of commodities depend on the quantity of labour required to produce them is where "the whole produce of labour belongs to the labourer" (Smith, 1776, vol. I, p. 54; see ibid., p. 72). "In that early and rude state of society which precedes both the accumulation of stock and the appropriate of land", he asserts "the proportion between the quantities of labour necessary for acquiring different objects seems to be the only circumstances which can afford any rule for exchanging them for one another" (ibid., p. 53).

Cited authors

Smith Adam