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I'd like to follow Paul Wendt's thought when he writes that "we must 
consider all of the following English-language adjectives from 18-19c 
economics: real, actual, intrinsic, natural and no doubt others 
(essential?)." Paul says that: 
 
>In my judgment: 
>Typically, those who coin such terms (give them some technical sense), and 
>many who circulate them, mean to emphasize what is real/etc, to propose 
>the real/etc as the object of study, to suggest that the real/etc is what 
>is important.  That is, they are anti-nominalists rather than nominalists. 
>--programmatic anti-nominalists (what we should study) or philosophic ones 
>(what is important). 
 
Now, I'm going to suppose that the "default" view of wages over the 
centuries (the "common sense" view, if you like) has been to see them in 
what we would call nominal, or money, terms. You received x drachmae, or y 
denarii, and that was your wage, period. 
 
Then along came Smith (and others mentioned by Ross Emmett and Tony Brewer) 
and, if Paul is right, they told us that what is *important* is some 
*underlying* concept (such as the equivalent in "sound currency", or 
perhaps labour value?). 
 
Later, Keynes brought our attention back to money values as being what 
actually mattered. 
 
Economics, then, seems to have gone from a nominal past, through a 
classically real period, perhaps to a nominal present and future (at least, 
if you're a Post Keynesian, though I don't mean to be parochial here). 
 
The problem remains, though, of identifying the writers in whom these 
turning points occurred. (I speak of the concepts, not necessarily the 
terms.) Was the first identification of the "real" to be found with Petty? 
(The OED is of course useful, but some of the relevant mediaeval writers 
may, I imagine, have used Latin.) And who were Keynes' predecessors, if 
any, in his description of monetary production economics? Or did the second 
"turning point"--from a real to a nominal view--actually originate with 
Keynes? 
 
You have all helped me focus my task: to find when those two turning points 
occurred. Further comments would be appreciated--and many thanks for those 
already received. 
 
p.s. I recognise that, let's say, not everyone even today buys what I have 
described as Keynes' view. 
 
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C.N.Gomersall                         [log in to unmask] 
 
http://econ-www.newcastle.edu.au/economics/nick/nick.html 
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