ABSTRACT
Interpreting Smith’s value theory chapters in The Wealth of Nations has proven to be frustratingly difficult. In this chapter, I introduce my subject matter by immediately placing Smith into theoretical and methodological issues raised by Marxian value theory: the labour theory of value. When Smith uses phrases such as “labour was the first price” or labour is the “real measure of exchangeable value” is he talking about the same thing when Marx and his followers talk about “true value” or “value” as “crystallized labour time” and similar expressions? I give a negative answer to this question. Smith and Marx had fundamentally different conceptions of science, and, therefore, the nature of scientific concepts. Smith was a Newtonian and a Humean while Marx was an Aristotelian. Marx’s concept of value is a metaphysical one in the Aristotelian sense of essence and substance. Smith had little time for this sort of discourse. His concepts are empirical, Marx’s “value” cannot be found in Smith.
