Bailey's book provides a good service, therefore, Marx says, in raising objections to Ricardo's confusion of money, as a commodity, which acts as a measure of value, and labour as “immanent measure and substance of value.” (p 137)
Ricardo's problem here is that, in seeing value only as exchange value, he seeks to find some quantitative measure of this exchange-value, much as the advocates of cardinal utility sought to find some quantitative measure of utility. The latter failed, and led to them falling back on to a purely relative measure of utility. Ricardo's attempt also failed, because it is impossible to find a quantitative measure for what was a qualitative relation between commodities, each containing different quantities of value.
It was no more use choosing money – gold, silver etc. - as a commodity to act as such a quantitative measure than it had been to use labour (power), corn etc., as such a measure, because, as commodities, these too were all bearers of value, which, as with any other commodity, changed over time, as a consequence of changes in social productivity. Had he begun, not from attempting to identify, in money, such a quantitative measure, but instead examined what money, as a commodity, had in common with every other commodity, he would have been led to the conclusion that they are all bearers of value, all representatives of social labour-time, and that it is on the basis of this qualitative identity that one can be compared to another. In order to measure exchange value, it is first necessary to measure value, in terms of social labour-time. Value must historically and logically precede exchange-value, just as the product must historically and logically precede the commodity.
“Instead of this, he contents himself with a mere superficial consideration of the external “measure of value”—which already presupposes value—and remains rooted in a purely frivolous approach to the question.” (p 138-9)
Of course, Ricardo, like Smith, Franklin and others has a labour theory of value, and does, thereby, identify that labour is the common element of all commodities, which determines their value, but, as an embodied labour theory of value, it fails to distinguish between the concrete labour embodied in the commodity, and the general social labour, which is the essence of value.
“All commodities can be reduced to labour as their common element. What Ricardo does not investigate is the specific form in which labour manifests itself as the common element of commodities. That is why he does not understand money. That is why in his work the transformation of commodities into money appears to be something merely formal, which does not penetrate deeply into the very essence of capitalist production. He says however: only because labour is the common factor of commodities, only because they are all mere manifestations of the same common element, of labour, is labour their measure. It is their measure only because it forms their substance as values. Ricardo does not sufficiently differentiate between labour insofar as it is represented in use-values or in exchange-value. Labour as the foundation of value is not any particular labour, with particular qualities. Ricardo continuously confuses the labour which is represented in use-value and that which is represented in exchange-value. It is true that the latter species of labour is only the former species expressed in an abstract form.” (p 138-9)
Ricardo refers to “real value” meaning the concrete labour embodied within the production of the commodities, and to “relative value” by which he means the exchange value, or the real value of one commodity expressed in a quantity of some other use value.
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