[33] Thus e. g., Adam Smith says: “Equal quantities of labour, at all times and places, may be said to be of equal value to the labourer. In his ordinary state of health, strength and spirits, in the ordinary degree of his skill and dexterity, he must always lay down the same portion of his ease, his liberty, and his happiness. The price which he pays must always be the same, whatever may be the quantity of goods which he receives in return for it. Of these, indeed, it may sometimes purchase a greater and sometimes a smaller quantity; but it is their value which varies, not that of the labour which purchases them.... Labour alone, therefore, never varying in its own value ... is their [commodities’] real price, etc. Adam Smith (Book I., ch. V., p. 34, Oxford, 1869. Translator.) [34] David Ricardo, “On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation,” 3rd edition, London, 1821, p. 3. [35] Sismondi, “Etudes sur l’Economie 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.] [36] Sismondi l. c., p. 163-166 seq. [Paris edition, 230 etf. Transl.] [37] Perhaps the silliest to be found are the annotations of J. B. Say to the French translation of Ricardo, made by Constancio, and the most pedantically arrogant are the remarks of Mr. MacLeod in his newly published “Theory of Exchange,” London, 1858. [38] This objection raised against Ricardo by bourgeois economists was taken up later by the socialists. Having assumed the correctness of the formula, they charged the practice with contradiction to the theory and appealed to bourgeois society to realize in practice the conclusions which were supposed to follow from its theoretical principles. That was at least the way in which the English socialists turned Ricardo’s formula of exchange value against political economy. It remained for Mr. Proudhon not only to proclaim the fundamental principle of old society as the principle of the new, but also to declare himself the discoverer of the formula in which Ricardo summed up the combined results of classical English political economy. It has been proven that the utopian interpretation of the Ricardian formula was about forgotten in England when Mr. Proudhon “discovered” it on the other side of the Canal. (Cf. my work: “Misère de la Philosophie,” etc., Paris, 1847, paragraph on la valeur constituée.)