THEORY OF VALUE

THEORY OF VALUE

1. The physiocratic theory

   • Where?
     • France
   • When?
     • In the middle of the 18th century
   • Theoretical assumptions
     • Agriculture is the only productive activity
       • Rent
       • Net income
       • New material subsistence
       • Net product
       • The wages that pay the labour of the industrial population
   • Quesnay
     • First articles
       • 1756-1757
       • In famous encyclopedia
         • Depicting the superiority of large scale
     • Attributed
       • The decline of agriculture to heavy taxes and to the artificially low price of corn
     • In 1758
       • Tableau economique
         • The first attempt To depict as a unified whole the entire process of the reproduction circulation distribution and consumption of a society’s product
       • Economie Générale te politique de I’agriculture
     • Wish
       • To trace out the path of social reproduction
   • Mistakes
     • They confused the increase of material substance with the increase of exchange value
     • They understand the exclusive productivity of agriculture
       • As ability to yield surplus quantum of value
       • As ability to produce a surplus quantity of material product

2. turgot

   • restored the freedom of the domestic corn trade
   • vs
     • the court aristocracy
     • the gentry
     • the tax farmers

3. England

   • the 18th century
   • different forms of industrial organization
     • diffused system of cottage or domestic large- scale industry
     • capitallist enterprises, or manufactories
     • independent handicrafts
   • Adam Smith
     • it is labour in general that he proclaims the sole source of wealth
     • social division of labour
       • technical, manufactory
     • division of labour
       • branches of production