David Ricardo: Labour

“Under a system of perfectly free commerce, each country naturally devotes its capital and labour to such employments as are most beneficial to each.”

David Ricardo

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter VII, On Foreign Trade, p. 81 (See also.. Karl Marx, Das Kapital,(Buch II), Chapter XX, p. 474)
Context: Under a system of perfectly free commerce, each country naturally devotes its capital and labour to such employments as are most beneficial to each. This pursuit of individual advantage is admirably connected with the universal good of the whole. By stimulating industry, by rewarding ingenuity, and by using most efficaciously the peculiar powers bestowed by nature, it distributes labour most effectively and most economically: while, by increasing the general mass of productions, it diffuses general benefit, and binds together, by one common tie of interest and intercourse, the universal society of nations throughout the civilized world.

Nature , Country

“LABOUR, like all other things which are purchased and sold, and which may be increased or diminished in quantity, has its natural and its market price. The natural price of labour is that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, on with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution.”

David Ricardo

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter V, On Wages, p. 52

Nature

“The farmer and manufacturer can no more live without profit than the labourer without wages.”

David Ricardo

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter VI, On Profits, p. 73

“But it is clear that the price of labour has no necessary connection with the price of food, since it depends entirely on the supply of labourers compared with the demand.”

David Ricardo

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter XVI, Taxes on Wages, p. 141

Food , Dependency

“Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchangeable value from two sources: from their scarcity, and from the quantity of labour required to obtain them.”

David Ricardo

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter I, Section I, On Value, p. 5

“The produce of the earth - all that is derived from its surface by the united application of labour, machinery, and capital, is divided among three classes of the community, namely, the proprietor of the land, the owner of the stock or capital necessary for its cultivation, and the labourers by whose industry it is cultivated.”

David Ricardo

Original Preface, p. 1
The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition)

Communication

“Mr. Malthus says, " It has been justly observed by Adam Smith that no equal quantity of productive labour employed in manufactures can ever occasion so great a reproduction as in agriculture. " If Adam Smith speaks of value, he is correct; but if he speaks of riches, which is the important point, he is mistaken; for he has himself defined riches to consist of the necessaries, conveniences, and enjoyments of human life. One set of necessaries and conveniences admits of no comparison with another set; value in use cannot be measured by any known standard; it is differently estimated by different persons.”

David Ricardo

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter XXXII, Malthus on Rent, p. 292

Life , Personality

“If I have to hire a labourer for a week, and instead of ten shillings I pay him eight, no variation having taken place in the value of money, the labourer can probably obtain more food and necessaries with his eight shillings than he before obtained for ten: but this is owing, not to a rise in the real value of his wages, as stated by Adam Smith, and more recently by Mr. Malthus, but to a fall in the value of the things on which his wages are expended, things perfectly distinct; and yet for calling this a fall in the real value of wages, I am told that I adopt new and unusual language, not reconcilable with the true principals of the science. To me it appears that the unusual and, indeed, inconsistent language is that used by my opponents.”

David Ricardo

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter I, Section I, On Value, p. 11

Money , Science , Appearance , Food