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010 _a05010468
040 _aUtSlPG
041 7 _aen
_2iso639-1
050 4 _aHB
100 1 _aWhitaker, Albert C.
_q(Albert Conser),
_d1877-1965
245 1 0 _aHistory and criticism of the labor theory of value in English political economy
264 1 _aSalt Lake City, UT :
_bProject Gutenberg,
_c2025
300 _a1 online resource :
_bmultiple file formats
336 _atext
_btxt
_2rdacontent
337 _acomputer
_bc
_2rdamedia
338 _aonline resource
_bcr
_2rdacarrier
490 1 _aStudies in history, economics and public law, volume XIX, number 2
500 _aRelease date is 2025-07-02
508 _aCurtis Weyant and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
520 _a"History and criticism of the labor theory of value in English political economy" by Albert C. Whitaker is a scholarly historical study written in the early 20th century. It examines how English economists developed and debated the labor theory of value, separating “philosophical” (primitive, essence-seeking) accounts from “empirical” (market and cost-based) explanations, and follows the doctrine from Adam Smith and Ricardo through Malthus, McCulloch, James Mill, Torrens, Senior, John Stuart Mill, and Cairnes. The opening of the work sets its scope and method, rejecting the idea of a single, unified “classical” labor theory and framing the history around two strands: a philosophical account that roots value in labor and an empirical account that explains market prices by entrepreneurs’ costs. It then dissects Adam Smith’s multiple and inconsistent treatments—his labor-cost regulator versus labor-command measure, his handling of labor as both productive power and disutility, and his corn-as-index idea—before showing how Smith abandons labor-cost for advanced society while retaining labor-command as a measure. Whitaker criticizes this move, then turns to Ricardo as a more consistent architect who treats utility as a prerequisite, excludes pure scarcity goods, counts indirect labor, and grapples—often obscurely—with profits and the fixed-versus-circulating capital complication in normal price (wages plus profits). The excerpt closes by introducing McCulloch, James Mill, and Torrens, highlighting McCulloch’s dogmatic broadening of “labor” (to include nature and machines) and noting his anticipation of the later Marxian “organic composition of capital” problem and its aggregate-value “solution.” (This is an automatically generated summary.)
534 _pOriginally published:
_cNew York: The Columbia University Press, 1904
653 _aEconomics -- Great Britain -- History
653 _aLabor theory of value -- Great Britain -- History
830 0 _aStudies in history, economics and public law, volume XIX, number 2
856 4 0 _uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76432
999 _c117157
_d117157