The whole motion of capitalist society revolves around the theory of value, put forth by David Ricardo.  

“The value of a commodity, or the quantity of any other commodity for which it will exchange, depends on the relative quantity of labour which is necessary for its production, and not on the greater or less compensation which is paid for that labour.

David Ricardo 

Principles of Political Economy and Taxation

London 1817

Which pretty much agrees with Adam Smith, who also put forth the ideas of surplus value in Wealth of Nations.  

Karl Marx would follow these luminaries, focusing like a laser beam on the surplus value, and illuminating the real relationship between capitalist and worker, and just how offensive this is to the worker.

All of capitalism revolves around creating surplus value, the unpaid secretion of the workday.  Whether it be rent, profit, the subdivision of profit we know as taxation;, without surplus value, everything stops functioning.

At least, as capitalist society.  By putting forth this theory, the theory of value, Ricardo very directly put forth an idea theory that is still relevant more than 200 years later.  It is still controversial, and Baron Keynes, (The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, a book by English economist John Maynard Keynes published in February 1936). who could not square off with more obvious implications, much of which was already in Adam Smith’s work, for instance on unproductive workers, and attempted to pull the curtain on the theory.  His technique was firstly to change all nominal meanings used by the past thinkers, instead we have for instance “margins” instead of “profit”, resulting in a puzzle to be solved with new language etc..

But he could not remove Marx.  All he could do about the contradiction, a contradiction he was directly part of, as he was a baron, in the unproductive classes, was to mystify political economy.  He never squared off with the reality the bourgeoisie does not labour, and its surplus value, created in production of the commodity, its most basic form , contains the conflict between capitalist and worker.   The state bureaucracy, the clergy, the private company bureaucrats, etc. to Adam Smith, were all unproductive.

Unable to change reality, Keynes set out to redefine the language of political economy, hoping the contradiction would simply go away.  He combines this with mathematics, designed to make the phenomenon of profit something other than what it is, simply the unpaid section of the workday, which does have mathematical connotations, but nowhere near the Calculus Keynes uses to cloak it, 

Thus Keynes marks the beginning to mid 20th Century, which sought to glass over the contradiction of unproductive classes, in this case through mystification, by making political economy inaccessible through making profits ”margins”, the  presence of a class of workers rendered semi employed by capitalism, as the “marginal disutility of that amount of employment”, rendering it unintelligible even to those familiar with political economy. 

In this effort this bourgeois represents the decline of political economy in the early 20th century, and is an example of why Ricardo’s theories are still controversial today, ditto Adam Smith.

“The labour of some of the most respectable orders in the society is, like that of menial servants, unproductive of any value, and does not fix or realize itself in any permanent subject; or vendible commodity, which endures after that labour is past, and for which an equal quantity of labour could afterwards be procured. The sovereign, for example, with all the officers both of justice and war who serve under him, the whole army and navy, are unproductive labourers. They are the servants of the public, and are maintained by a part of the annual produce of the industry of other people. Their service, how honourable, how useful, or how necessary soever, produces nothing for which an equal quantity of service can afterwards be procured. The protection, security, and defence of the commonwealth, the effect of their labour this year will not purchase its protection, security, and defence for the year to come. In the same class must be ranked, some both of the gravest and most important, and some of the most frivolous professions: churchmen, lawyers, physicians, men of letters of all kinds; players, buffoons, musicians, opera-singers, opera-dancers, etc. The labour of the meanest of these has a certain value, regulated by the very same principles which regulate that of every other sort of labour; and that of the noblest and most useful,  produces nothing which could afterwards purchase or procure an equal quantity of labour. Like the declamation of the actor, the harangue of the orator, or the tune of the musician, the work of all of them perishes in the very instant of its production. 

Adam Smith

Wealth of Nations Chapter 3

Which was revolutionary,  and still reverberates.  Faced with this, our economist can only try to redefine the language, and make this idea unintelligible in a jumble of mathematical equations and subterfuge designed to make political economy calculus.

It was left to Marx to put together these ideas, which he did in Theories of Surplus Value.  The Ricardian theories play out, Smith’s thesis is allowed full  play, resulting in a revolutionary exposition of political economy still unanswered by bourgeois writers.  

Nicholas Jay Boyes  

Milwaukee Wisconsin

American Democratic Republic

10 23 2023

revision 9 20 2025