John Locke and the Labor Theory of Value

It is taken for granted by most economists and political philosophers that John Locke was in some sense a precursor of the labor theories of value of the nineteenth century British Classical School and of Karl Marx, yet there is a wide divergence of opinion on how Locke’s work anticipated and influenced the work of later political economists. In large part this difference of opinion stems from a disagreement among historians of economic thought over how to interpret Locke himself on the subject of labor and economic value. The only point of agreement is that, in his major political essay, the Second Treatise of Government,[” Locke developed a theory of property which showed some relationship between labor and economic value. Historians of economic thought cannot agree on the significance of this relationship or on how Locke’s ideas on labor and value are related to his supply and demand theory of market price in his economic writings.

Volume 2, Number 4 (1978)