What was the Ricardian theory of value? Ricardo himself stipulated, in the opening of his Principles of political Economy and Taxtion, that the value of a commodity or the quantity of any other commodity for it will it will exchange depends on the rel...
What was the Ricardian theory of value? Ricardo himself stipulated, in the opening of his Principles of political Economy and Taxtion, that the value of a commodity or the quantity of any other commodity for it will it will exchange depends on the relative quantity of labour which is necessary for its production, and not on the greater or less compensation which is paid for that labour. He meant to involve in the quantity of labour not only the direct labour but the indirect labour stored-up in capital. So it has been well known that Ricadian theory of value is the labour theory of value. According to the orthodox interpretation Ricardo was the eminent founder of such labour theory of value.
Professor Paul A. Samuelson gave, however, a different opinion on this subject. In his paper(1) "A Modern Treatment of Ricadian Economy," Professor Samuelson argued that the long-run Ricadian system involves the land theory of value. Samuel-son bald that basic difficulties for a labour theory of value come from tole Ricardo's theory of differential rent as much as from problems of the organic composition of capital. By going to an extensive margin, one cannot really get rid of land as a factor of production and of rent as a determining element of cost and exchangeable value. For the extensive margin is itself a variable, to be determined like any other equilibrium variable as part of the theorist's explicit task.
According to Professor Samuelson, the use of mathematics can also produce some amusing conclusions. A long-run Ricadian system involving subsistence wages and homogeneous land, can have applied to it the sentence: "Labor is the cause and measure of exchangeable value, "but with labour struck out and land put in its place. Goods can be shown to be exchanged in proportion to their mathematically definable embodied land content. with land services providing us something like an invariable standard of value in terms of which absoulte value can be measured with perfect accuracy. And all this hold regardless of inequalites in (i) the organic composition of capital. (ii) the time intensities of different processes, or (iii) the proportions of direct land used in different productive process.
Thus, according to Samuelson, land is the measure and creator of all products in the long-run Ricadian system. Land is the source of wage's gross product, the products the source of rent's net product. Labour, to be sure is need as a co-operating input, being reproducible within the system it can be regarded simply as congealed or embodied corn. Even this is an understatement; corn itself can be thought of as "congealed" or embodied lands and so labour too can be regarded in the last analysis as "embodied" land. Having demolished labour as on absolute standard of value, Samuelson can turn Ricardo upside down and find in Ricardo's long-run model a land theory of value.
How strange it sounds to the students who disciplined in the orthodox tradition! We have many questions about Samuelson's modern treatment of Ricardo. Followings are three major points that is important to reconsider Samuelson's Ricardian land theory of value.
(1) Ricardo himself had excluded the land as a component part of exchangeable value. For the nature is always gratis Inhere she is municiently beneficient. and the land is the gift of nature, not the product of human being. His theory of value is to analyse economic phenomena from the point of pure social relations, excluding any kind of natural factor Ricardo ban a clear distinction of the properties of rich (or wealth) and value that he excluded the land services in the formation of value. He was convinced that land renders us rich the increasing the products, but does not increase the exchangeable value at all. Therefore, we cannot congeal the labour and capital into embodied land content.
(2) Ricardo had also excluded rent as a component part of price or value. Rent is not the cause of high price but the elect of it, and rent does not and cannot enter in the least degree as a component part of its price. Therefore we can not take rent as a numeraire in any equation.
(3) If there are land theory of value in the long-run Ricardian system, Ricardo would protect rent and landlord. In fact, however, Ricardo had fought against the enactment of Corn Law and else of rent rate for landlord. He convinced that the rent is unproductive and checks the social development. He was always standing on the side of industrial capitalist. He enphasized the oppositions of capitalists and landlords and was anxious that tendential fall of profit which he thought as foundation of social development, should occur while the unproductive rent should increase. In this connecition how can it be accepted the validity of Samuelson's Ricardian land value?