ABSTRACT
Orthodox economic beliefs in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries held that private property and ownership of the means of production would ultimately prove beneficial to all, while socialists maintained that any system treating labor as a commodity was not only inherently immoral but also underproductive economically for society. David Ricardo’s version of John Locke’s labor theory of value provided a new stimulus for radical political economy. Ricardo and the Ricardian socialists’ view of the employers’ functions in the “capitalist exchange” are, explicitly, to furnish workers with tools, raw materials, and means of subsistence. Ricardo’s formulation was based on two separate concepts—the marginal and the surplus principle. The Ricardian socialist reply emphasized that various changes in social organization or technological innovation could potentially affect population. For Ricardian socialists, the concept of socialism did not focus on class struggle, exclusive ownership of the means of production, central planning, or nationalism.
