Ricardo, like Smith, and the other classical economists, emphasises that labour is the sole source of value.
“It is precisely through the consistency with which he treats the value of commodities as merely “representing” socially determined labour, that Ricardo differs from the other economists. All these economists understand more or less clearly, but Ricardo more clearly than the others, that the exchange-value of things is a mere expression, a specific social form, of the productive activity of men, something entirely different from things and their use as things, whether in industrial or in non-industrial consumption. For them, value is, in fact, simply an objectively expressed relation of the productive activity of men, of the different types of labour to one another.” (p 181)
Ricardo himself quotes Destutt de Tracy's words as expressing his own view.
““As it is certain that our physical and moral faculties are alone our original riches, the employment of those faculties” (the faculties of men), “labour of some kind” (that is, labour as the realisation of the faculties of men), “is our only original treasure, and that it is always from this employment, that all those things are created which we call riches… It is certain too, that all those things only represent the labour which has created them, and if they have a value, or even two distinct values, they can only derive them from that of the labour from which they emanate” ( [Destutt de Tracy, Elémens d’idéologie, IV-e et V-e parties. “Traité de la volonté et de ses effets”, Paris, 1826, pp. 35-36; quoted by Ricardo in his Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation, third ed., London, 1821,] p. 334).” (p 181)
McCulloch, therefore, had not taken Ricardo's views to their logical conclusions, and thereby dealt with all of the inconsistencies and contradictions of the Ricardian system, as those such as Roscher claimed, but had completely abandoned it, and undermined it.
This method of loudly proclaiming to be the defender of the views of those that have gone before, whilst actually substituting for those views the views of their opponents, has been commonplace in the writings of those epigones amongst the Stalinists, who, thereby, abandoned and undermined the ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin.
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