Engels chronology is inaccurate. He writes that, in 1609, Thomas Mun's “A Discourse On Trade etc.” had appeared four years prior to the Breve trattato. In fact, Mun's work did not appear until 1621, having been written around 1615. Setting that aside, Mun's work is vastly superior, and was far more influential than that of Serra. The significance of Mun's work was that “it was directed against the original monetary system which was then still defended in England as the practice of the state, and that hence it represented the conscious self-separation of the mercantile system from the system which gave it birth.” (p 294-5)
This was the period in which Britain begins to challenge the Netherlands for the position of leading mercantile nation. As Marx describes, in Theories of Surplus Value, it is why, in Britain, the dominant ideas are those of mercantilism that surplus-value arises from exchange, as against the dominant ideas, in France, being those of the Physiocrats that surplus-value arises in production. This mercantilism, in action, arising from a rapidly expanding commercial bourgeoisie, i.e. merchants, in a symbiotic relation with the landed aristocracy that finances its overseas adventures and the creation of colonies, sets the basis for the legislation and creation of protectionist regimes and monopolies.
“In the edition of 1664 (England's Treasure etc.), which had been completely rewritten by the author and was published after his death, it remained the mercantilist gospel for another hundred years. If therefore mercantilism has an epoch-making work “as a kind of inscription at the entrance”, it is this book, and for this very reason it simply does not exist for Herr Dühring's “history which most carefully observes distinctions of rank”.” (p 295)
Marx recognised William Petty as the founder of modern political economy, but Duhring says,
“there was“ a fair measure of superficiality in his way of thinking” and that he had “no sense of the intrinsic and nicer distinctions between concepts” ... while he possessed “a versatility which knows a great deal but skips lightly from one thing to another without taking root in any idea of a more profound character”; .. that he “proceeds very crudely in economic matters”, and that he “achieves naivetés, whose contrasts ... may at times well amuse a more serious thinker”.” (p 295)
Petty represents a gateway between the ideas of the mercantilists, which held sway in Britan, and those of Ferguson, Smith and Ricardo, which recognised that the essence of value is labour, and that, consequently, surplus value, the basis of capital accumulation, is surplus labour. But, Engels notes, Duhring makes only only one fleeting reference to the fact that Petty introduced the idea that it is labour that is the essence of value, and labour-time its measure.
“In his Treatise on Taxes and Contributions (first edition 1662), Petty gives a perfectly clear and correct analysis of the magnitude of value of commodities. In illustrating this magnitude at the outset by the equal value of precious metals and corn which cost the same quantity of labour, he says the first and the last “theoretical” word on the value of the precious metals. But he also lays it down in a precise and general way that the values of commodities are measured by equal labour.” (p 295-6)
In practice, the ratio in which commodities exchange, their market prices, are also affected by fluctuations of supply and demand. Moreover, once capitalist production begins, commodities do not exchange at their values but at prices of production, the analysis of which was only provided by Marx.
“He therefore tries to find another way in certain purposes of detail.
A natural par should therefore be found between land and labour, so that value might be expressed at will "by either of them alone as well or better by both"
Even this error is an error of genius.” (p 296)
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