The Smithian Reaction

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The Smithian Reaction
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Jeremy Bentham

• Nature has placed mankind under the governance of
  two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is
  for them alone to point out what we ought to do
  as well as to determine what we shall do.  On the
  one hand, the standard of right and wrong, on the
  other the chain of causes and effects, are
  fastened to their throne.

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• The value of a pleasure or pain will be greater
  or less according to several circumstances its
  intensity, its direction its certainty or
  uncertainty its propinquity or remoteness its
  fecundity its purity its extent.

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• Value in use is the basis of value in exchange
  This distinction comes from Adam Smith but he has
  not attached to it clear conceptions The reason
  why water is found not to have any value with a
  view to exchange is that it is equally devoid of
  a value with a view to use. If the whole
  quantity required is available, the surplus has
  no kind of value. It would be the same in the
  case of wine, grain, and everything else.

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• It must be stressed that any commodity
  whatsoever, as soon as it is brought to the
  market, offers an outlet to other products for
  the whole amount of its value. In fact, when a
  manufacturer has produced a commodity, he has an
  extreme need and wish to sell it, so that its
  value does not dissolve in his hands. But he is
  no less willing to get rid of the money vanishing
  by remaining idle. Now, one cannot get rid of
  ones own money except by purchasing some
  product. J. B. Say

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• Malthus "The question of a glut is exclusively
  whether it may be general, as well as particular,
  and not whether it may be permanent as well as
  temporary...The tendency, in the natural course
  of things, to cure a glut or scarcity, is no more
  a proof that such evils have never existed, than
  the tendency of the healing processes of nature
  to cure some disorders without assistance from
  man, is a proof that such disorders never
  existed."

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• Ricardo I may be asked what I mean by the word
  value, and by what criterion I would judge
  whether a commodity had or had not changed its
  value. I answer, I know no other criterion of a
  thing being dear or cheap buy by the sacrifices
  of labour made to obtain it

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• Ricardo The effective demand for labour must
  depend upon the increase of that part of capital,
  in which the wages of labour are paid - to the
  capitalist it can be of no importance whether his
  capital consists of fixed or of circulating
  capital, but it is of the greatest importance to
  those who live by the wages of labour they are
  greatly interested in increasing the gross
  revenue, as it is on the gross revenue that must
  depend the means of providing for the population
  . If capital is realized in machinery, there will
  be little demand for an increased quantity of
  labour