Memorials and Other Papers — Complete

by Thomas De Quincey

Phæd. I understand your distinction; and in which sense do you say that Mr. Malthus has used the term Measure of Value—in the sense of a ground, or of a criterion?

X. In both senses; he talks of it as "accounting for" the value of A, in which case it means a ground of value; and as "estimating" the value of A, in which case it means a criterion of value. I mention these expressions as instances; but, the truth is, that, throughout his essay entitled "The Measure of Value Stated and Illustrated" and throughout his "Political Economy" (but especially in the second chapter, entitled "The Nature and Measures of Value"), he uniformly confounds the two ideas of a ground and a criterion of value under a much greater variety of expressions than I have time to enumerate.

Phil. But, admitting that Mr. Malthus has proceeded on the misconception you state, what is the specific injury which has thence resulted to Mr. Ricardo?

X. I am speaking at present of the uses to be derived from Mr. Ricardo's principle of value. Now, if it had been proposed as a measure of value, we might justly demand that it should be "ready and easy of application," to adopt the words of Mr. Malthus ("Measure of Value," p. 54); but it is manifestly not so; for the quantity of labor employed in producing A "could not in many cases" (as Mr. Malthus truly objects) "be ascertained without considerable difficulty;" in most cases, indeed, it could not be ascertained at all. A measure of value, however, which cannot be practically applied, is worthless; as a measure of value, therefore, Mr. Ricardo's law of value is worthless; and if it had been offered as such by its author, the blame would have settled on Mr. Ricardo; as it is, it settles on Mr. Malthus, who has grounded an imaginary triumph on his own gross misconception. For Mr. Ricardo never dreamed of offering a standard or fixed measure of value, or of tolerating any pretended measure of that sort, by whomsoever offered.

Thus much I have said for the sake of showing what is not the use of Mr. Ricardo's principle in the design of its author; in order that he may be no longer exposed to the false criticism of those who are looking for what is not to be found, nor ought to be found, [Footnote: At p. 36 of "The Measure of Value" (in the footnote), this misconception as to Mr. Ricardo appears in a still grosser shape; for not only does Mr. Malthus speak of a "concession" (as he calls it) of Mr. Ricardo as being "quite fatal" to the notion of a standard of value,—as though it were an object with Mr. Ricardo to establish such a standard,—but this standard, moreover, is now represented as being gold. And what objection does Mr. Malthus make to gold as a standard? The identical objection which Mr. Ricardo had himself insisted on in that very page of his third edition to which Mr. Malthus refers.] in his work. On quitting this part of the subject, I shall just observe that Mr. Malthus, in common with many others, attaches a most unreasonable importance to the discovery of a measure of value. I challenge any man to show that the great interests of Political Economy have at all suffered for want of such a measure, which at best would end in answering a few questions of unprofitable curiosity; whilst, on the other hand, without a knowledge of the ground on which value depends, or without some approximation to it, Political Economy could not exist at all, except as a heap of baseless opinions.

Phæd. Now, then, having cleared away the imaginary uses of Mr. Ricardo's principle, let us hear something of its real uses.

X. The most important of these I expressed in the last words I uttered: That without which a science cannot exist is commensurate in use with the science itself; being the fundamental law, it will testify its own importance in the changes which it will impress on all the derivative laws. For the main use of Mr. Ricardo's principle, I refer you therefore to all Political Economy. Meantime, I will notice here the immediate services which it has rendered by liberating the student from those perplexities which previously embarrassed him on his first introduction to the science; I mention two cases by way of specimen.

1. When it was asked by the student what determined the value of all commodities, it was answered that this value was chiefly determined by wages. When again it was asked what determined wages, it was recollected that wages must generally be adjusted to the value of the commodities upon which they were spent; and the answer was in effect that wages were determined by the value of commodities. And thus the mind was entangled in this inextricable circle—that the price of commodities was determined by wages, and wages determined by the price of commodities. From this gross Diallælos (as the logicians call it), or see-saw, we are now liberated; for the first step, as we are now aware, is false: the value of commodities is not determined by wages; since wages express the value of labor; and it has been demonstrated that not the value but the quantity of labor determines the value of its products.

2. A second case, in which Mr. Ricardo's law has introduced a simplicity into the science which had in vain been sought for before, is this: all former economists, in laying down the component parts of price, had fancied it impossible to get rid of what is termed the raw material as one of its elements. This impossibility was generally taken for granted: but an economist of our times, the late Mr. Francis Horner, had (in the Edinburgh Review) expressly set himself to prove it. "It is not true," said Mr. Horner, "that the thing purchased in every bargain is merely so much labor: the value of the raw material can neither be rejected as nothing, nor estimated as a constant quantity." Now, this refractory element is at once, and in the simplest way possible, exterminated by Mr. Ricardo's reformed law of value. Upon the old system, if I had resolved the value of my hat into wages and profits, I should immediately have been admonished that I had forgotten one of the elements: "wages, profits, and raw material, you mean," it would have been said. Raw material! Well, but on what separate principle can this raw material be valued? or on what other principle than that on which the hat itself was valued? Like any other product of labor, its value is determined by the quantity of labor employed in obtaining it; and the amount of this product is divided between wages and profits as in any case of a manufactured commodity. The raw material of the hat suppose to be beaver: if, then, in order to take the quantity of beavers which are necessary to furnish materials for a thousand hats, four men have been employed for twenty-five days, then it appears that the raw material of a thousand hats has cost a hundred days' labor, which will be of the same value in exchange as the product of a hundred days' labor (previously equated and discounted as to its quality) in any other direction; as, for example, if a hundred days' labor would produce two thousand pairs of stockings of a certain quality, then it follows that the raw material of my hat is worth two pairs of such stockings. And thus it turns out that an element of value (which Mr. Horner and thousands of others have supposed to be of a distinct nature, and to resist all further analysis) gives way before Mr. Ricardo's law, and is eliminated; an admirable simplification, which is equal in merit and use to any of the rules which have been devised, from time to time, for the resolution of algebraic equations.

Here, then, in a hasty shape, I have offered two specimens of the uses which arise from a better law of value; again reminding you, however, that the main use must lie in the effect which it will impress on all the other laws of Political Economy. And reverting for one moment, before we part, to the difficulty of Philebus about the difference between this principle as a principium cognoscendi or measure, and a principium essendi or determining ground, let me desire you to consider these two essential marks of distinction: 1. that by all respectable economists any true measure of value has been doubted or denied as a possibility: but no man can doubt the existence of a ground of value; 2. that a measure is posterior to the value; for, before a value can be measured or estimated, it must exist: but a ground of value must be antecedent to the value, like any other cause to its effect.