outside of the bourgeois form with which he was acquainted. Although confined within this bourgeois horizon, Ricardo analyzes the bourgeois economy—which looks quite different to deeper insight than it does on the surface—with such keen power of theoretical penetration that Lord Brougham could say of him: "Mr. Ricardo seemed as if he had dropped from another planet."
In a direct controversy with Ricardo, Sismondi lays stress upon the specifically social character of labor which creates exchange value,[1] and says it is "characteristic of our economic progress" to reduce the magnitude of value to the necessary labor-time, to the relation between the demand of society as a whole and the quantity of labor which is sufficient to satisfy this demand.[2] Sismondi is no more laboring under Boisguillebert's idea, that labor which creates exchange value is adulterated by money; but just as Boisguillebert denounced money, so does Sismondi denounce large industrial capital. In Ricardo political economy reached its climax, after recklessly drawing its ultimate conclusions, while Sismondi supplemented it by impersonating its doubts.
Since Ricardo gave to classical political economy its
- ↑ Sismondi, "Etudes sur l'Economic Politique," t. II., Bruxelles, 1837. "C'est l'opposition entre la valeur usuelle . . . et la valeur échangeable à laquelle le commerce a reduit toute chose," p. 161. [Paris edition, p. 229, Transl.]
- ↑ Sismondi l. c., p. 163–166 seq. [Paris edition, 230 etf. Transl.]
