EDITED BY THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Volume XIX] [Number 2 HISTORY AND CRITICISM OF THE LABOR THEORY OF VALUE IN ENGLISH POLITICAL ECONOMY BY ALBERT C. WHITAKER, Ph.D., _Sometime University Fellow in Economics, Columbia University; Instructor in Economics, Leland Stanford Junior University_ [Illustration] New York THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, AGENTS LONDON: P. S. KING & SON 1904 COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY ALBERT C. WHITAKER CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I GENERAL OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF THE LABOR THEORY § 1. Scope of the present history 9 § 2. Great diversity of early opinions on value 10 § 3. The two main ideas, the “philosophical” and the “empirical” accounts of value 12 CHAPTER II ADAM SMITH’S PHILOSOPHICAL OR PRIMITIVE ACCOUNT OF VALUE § 1. Interpretation of Smith’s doctrine of value rendered difficult by a plurality of explanations 16 § 2. Preliminary observations concerning the use of the terms “labor” and “value” 19 § 3. The two distinct labor standards in the primitive account—the “labor cost” and the “labor command” standards 20 § 4. Smith’s conception of quantity of labor 22 § 5. The labor and the corn measure of value in different times and places 24 CHAPTER III THE EMPIRICAL ACCOUNT OF ADAM SMITH § 1. Abandonment of the labor-cost standard for the conditions of real society 29 § 2. The labor-command standard retained as still valid 30 CHAPTER IV CRITICISM OF THE THEORIES OF ADAM SMITH § 1. Principal argument for the labor-command standard a theory of labor as undifferentiated or potential commodity 32 § 2. Complete failure of this theory to afford an ultimate philosophy of value 34