The dogma that “wages determine the price of commodities,” expressed in its most abstract terms, comes to this, that “value is determined by value,” and this tautology means that, in fact, we know nothing at all about value. Accepting this premise, all reasoning about the general laws of political economy turns into mere twaddle. It was, therefore, the great merit of Ricardo that in his work On the Principles of Political Economy, published in 1817, he fundamentally destroyed the old popular, and worn-out fallacy that “wages determine prices,” a fallacy which Adam Smith and his French predecessors had spurned in the really scientific parts of their researches, but which they reproduced in their more exoterical and vulgarizing chapters.
I feel that this is particularly important to note, as the claim that higher wages increase inflation continues to remain popular among capitalist apologists. Thanks for sharing this.
The mention of the positive correlation between wage and market demand also shows that Marx had the awareness that the market economy weight the demand of the people according to their wealth. I had heard more absurd claim from the victim of Communism than the argument that higher wage increase with the claim that any wage increase will suddenly lead to recession. In the first place, the priority to people who more property than to people who provide the labor proves that the Capitalists never support meritocracy and also provide more evidence that that Capitalists hypocritically use the very state terrorism and free riding that they projected to Communism.
I’m almost done with this thread :) gotta add the last two chapters.
Edit (2022-08-10T14:28:00-05:00): Thread complete now.
Doing god’s work!
