Labour commanded and Smith?s measure of value: how to go beyond village?s boundaries without falling in abstract systems

LEANDRO HABERFELD

Viña del Mar

Conferencia; 2018 Adam Smith Chile Conference; 2018

International Adam Smith Society -IASS-

In the theory of value developed in Adam Smith?s Wealth of Nations, the necessity of a commodity that works as standard of value, that allows both the estimation and comparison of commodities in different places and throughout the time, has been interpreted, since Marx, as a symptom of the impossibility to prove its validity within a capitalist society. How can be demonstrated, in a society of strangers, that commodity interchange is conducted in accordance with the effort, ?toil and trouble?, required in their production, as in a little town where everyone is aware of it?In this paper, it is held that, beyond certain logical inconsistencies between measure and determination of value in Wealth of Nations, labour commanded and the mechanisms whereby market prices gravitate around natural prices, together with corn and precious metals as substitutes of labour as measure of value for the long and short term, respectively, allow Smith to avoid falling not only in an abstract theory but also in a purely local one.