ABSTRACT
In the Aristotelian system economics is a subdivision of politics, which again is a part of ethics or practical philosophy. Economics is distinguished from other branches of political science not so much by its object of inquiry. Economics thus came to occupy a key position in the social sciences. It became its task to discover what was 'socially useful'. But economists had adopted the concept of 'law' from the philosophy of natural law. Ricardo's position, which came to dominate classical economics, seems even odder when we remember that alternative concepts of real value were available. Adam Smith had given two definitions of real value: first, labour used up in the production of a commodity, and second, the quantity of labour which a commodity can command in the market. The classics already had given the concept of 'labour' a psychological connotation. The psychological idea of labour value was always linked with a metaphysical conception of man's place in nature.
