Value and Riches

Meacci, Ferdinando (1998): Value and Riches.

Abstract

The distinction between ‘value’ and ‘riches’ was first highlighted by Ricardo in Chapter XX, ‘Value and Riches, their distinctive Properties’, of his Principles (1821). Ricardo’s aim was to clear up Smith’s famous statement that “every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life” (1776, Bk.I, Ch.V). The paper argues that Ricardo's criticism of Smith's statement is as inaccurate as Smith's peculiar way of developing by such a statement his crucial distinction between the wealth of an individual and the wealth of a society as well as his analysis of the mechanisms by which the search for increasing the former (via the notion of "exchangeable values") results in an actual increase of the latter (via the notion of "use values").

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Smith, Ricardo, wealth, use values, exchange values
• Subjects: B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B1 - History of Economic Thought through 1925 > B12 - Classical (includes Adam Smith); B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B0 - General

References

DE QUINCEY, T. (1844), The Logic of Political Economy, Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons

MALTHUS, R.T. (1836), Principles of Political Economy, New York: Kelley

RICARDO, D. (1821), Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, in P. Sraffa (ed.), The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

SAY, J.B. (1814), Traité d’économie politique, 2nd ed., Paris

SMITH, A. (1776), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Oxford: Clarendon Press