Contrary to Adam Smith, David Ricardo elaborated with great clearness the determination of the value of a commodity by labor-time and showed that this law governs also such relations of capitalistic production which seem to contradict it most. Ricardo confines his investigations exclusively to the quantitative determination of value and as regards the latter he is at least conscious of the fact that the realization of the law depends upon certain historical conditions. He says, namely, that the determination of value by labor-time holds good for commodities "only as can be increased in quantity by the exertion of human industry, and on the production of which competition operates without restraint."[1] What he really means is that the law of value presupposes for its full development an industrial society in which production is carried on a large scale and free competition prevails, i. e. the modern capitalist society. In all other respects, Ricardo considers the capitalist form of labor as the eternal natural form of social labor. He makes the primitive fisherman and the primitive hunter straightway exchange their fish and game as owners of commodities, in proportion to the labor-time embodied in these exchange values. On this occasion he commits the anachronism of making the primitive fisherman and primitive hunter consult the annuity tables in current use on the London Exchange in the year 1817 in the calculation relating to their instruments. The "parallelograms of Mr. Owen" seem to be the only form of society
- ↑ David Ricardo, "On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation," 3rd edition, London, 1821, p. 3.
