An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsSmith, Adam
History
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Smith, Adam
Economics
And, lastly, what are the different circumstances which sometimes raise
some or all of these different parts of price above, and sometimes sink
them below, their natural or ordinary rate; or, what are the causes which
sometimes hinder the market price, that is, the actual price of
commodities, from coinciding exactly with what may be called their natural
price.
I shall endeavour to explain, as fully and distinctly as I can, those
three subjects in the three following chapters, for which I must very
earnestly entreat both the patience and attention of the reader: his
patience, in order to examine a detail which may, perhaps, in some places,
appear unnecessarily tedious; and his attention, in order to understand
what may perhaps, after the fullest explication which I am capable of
giving it, appear still in some degree obscure. I am always willing to run
some hazard of being tedious, in order to be sure that I am perspicuous;
and, after taking the utmost pains that I can to be perspicuous, some
obscurity may still appear to remain upon a subject, in its own nature
extremely abstracted.
CHAPTER V.
OF THE REAL AND NOMINAL PRICE OF
COMMODITIES, OR OF THEIR PRICE IN LABOUR, AND THEIR PRICE IN MONEY.
Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford
to enjoy the necessaries, conveniencies, and amusements of human life. But
after the division of labour has once thoroughly taken place, it is but a
very small part of these with which a man’s own labour can supply him. The
far greater part of them he must derive from the labour of other people,
and he must be rich or poor according to the quantity of that labour which
he can command, or which he can afford to purchase. The value of any
commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to
use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is
equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or
command. Labour therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value
of all commodities.
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