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I find parts of Tim Leonard's contribution to this discussion rather disturbing.  He
writes:"The classical economists generally thought of utility as an objective property
(roughly akin to "usefulness") of things – consistent with their labor theory of value."
 
1.  Which classical economists would have considered a hoe equally useful to a fisherman
as to a farmer?  If not, in what sense would they have considered utility "an objective
property"?
 
2.  Adam Smith used labor -- the "ease, liberty, and happiness" foregone in production --
as a measure of "the exchangeable value of all commodities" rather than their determinant.
David Ricardo went some distance in including the amount of labor directly (current labor)
and indirectly (capital goods) expended on a commodity, besides its utility, in
determining values in exchange.  As J.S. Mill explained, "when Adam Smith and Malthus say
that labour is a measure of value, they do not mean the labour by which the thing was or
can be made, but the quantity of labour which it will exchange for, or purchase; in other
words the value of the thing, estimated in labour.  And they do not mean that this
*regulates* [italicized word] the general exchange value of the thing, but only ascertains
what it is, and whether and how much it varies from time to time and from place to place."
Importantly, Mill adds,"To
confound these two ideas, would be much the same thing as to overlook the distinction
between the thermometer and the fire."  (Works, 3: 580-1).  So besides Karl Marx, which
classical economist had a "labor theory of value," as Tim asserts?
 
3.  Before Jeremy Bentham there was Adam Smith.  Why ignore Smith's clarification of the
difference between value in use (utility) and value in exchange (price), the former being
subjective and the latter being objective, i.e., observable?
 
James Ahiakpor 
 
 
 
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