The Measure of Value Stated and Illustrated / With an Application of it to the Alterations in the Value of the English Currency since 1790

by T. R. Malthus

Secondly, that when profits are concerned, and differ either in rate or quantity, commodities can no longer exchange with each other, according to the quantity of labour employed upon them, except by accident.

Thirdly, that the quantity of accumulated and immediate labour applied to their production, must, in all the less complex cases, form the advances on which profits may be correctly calculated.

And, fourthly, that when profits are calculated upon these advances, a quantity of labour is obtained, according to which it is found, by experience, that commodities do exchange with each other in the same country; and, further, that this quantity of labour not only expresses correctly their value in exchange with each other, but their absolute and natural value in reference to the conditions of their supply.

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In proceeding to consider what takes place in different countries where the value of the precious metals is very different, it will readily be acknowledged, that the rate at which commodities exchange with each other is not proportioned to the labour which has been employed upon them, with the addition of profits. And it is quite certain, that they cannot be proportioned to the quantity of labour alone of which they are composed. We know, from experience, that the commodities of different countries are actually exchanged with each other according to their money prices at the time. These prices must be determined partly by those natural elements of value which determine the rate at which commodities exchange with each other, and the natural conditions of their supply in each country, and partly by the different value of the precious metals in different situations, which must necessarily have a most powerful effect on the rate at which foreign commodities are exchanged.

Knowing then the elements of the natural and relative value of commodities in the same country, if we knew also the difference in the value of money in different countries, we should know at once the rate at which the commodities of different countries would exchange with each other.

Now there is no supposition but one, relating to the value of money in different countries, which, combined with the natural elements of the value of produce in each, would constitute the present natural prices of commodities in these countries, or the rates at which they actually exchange with each other. This is the supposition that the differences in the value of money in different countries are proportioned to the differences in the money prices of agricultural labour.[E]

The conditions of the supply of an Indian commodity are the advance and consumption of a certain quantity of Indian labour, with the profits on all the advances for the time that they are employed. Thus, if for the production of an Indian commodity, a fixed capital consisting of accumulated labour and profits, equal to 300 days, were advanced for a year, and a quantity of accumulated and immediate labour, consisting of the wear and tear of the machinery, the materials to be worked up, and direct labour, equal to 1500 days, were consumed on the commodity in the same time, profits being 20 per cent., the natural value of such commodity in India would be equal to the 1500 days labour consumed, with a profit of 20 per cent. upon 1800 days labour, which would amount to 1860 days labour.

If labour in India were fourpence a day, the fixed money capital in this case would equal £5, the labour advanced and consumed £25, and the labour consumed, together with the profits on the whole advances, would be equal to £31. And this would evidently be the natural price at which the commodity would circulate, and according to which it would exchange with any foreign commodity brought to India.

On the same principle, if for the production of an English commodity, 300 days labour were advanced in fixed capital for a year, and 1500 days labour were consumed on the commodity in the same time, while profits were 10 per cent., the natural value of such commodity, or the conditions of its supply, would be 1500 days labour, with a profit of 10 per cent. upon 1800, which together would equal 1680: and if labour were two shillings a day, the natural price at which the commodity would circulate, and according to which it would exchange with any foreign commodity brought to England, would be £168. This prodigious difference in the natural prices of two commodities in England and India, the natural values of which in each country were nearly the same, could only arise from a difference in the value of money occasioned by the very superior efficiency of English labour in the purchase of the precious metals, owing to the energy, skill, and situation of English labourers and capitalists, compared with those of India. But in estimating this difference in the value of money in England and India, it is quite obvious, that if, after ascertaining the natural conditions of the supply of a commodity in each country, we were to estimate the value of money either by its general power of purchasing, by a mean between corn and labour,[F] or by the quantity of labour alone which had been actually employed in bringing the money from the mine to the market, or by any other measure whatever, except the labour which it would command, we should not account for the natural prices which are found actually to prevail in the two countries, and according to which Indian and English commodities are found to exchange with each other by experience.