376 PONTIFICIAE ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARVM SCRIPTA VARIA - 28
aspects of the modern world mentioned above and had in fact
no hesitation in singling out the industrial aspect as by far
the more important.
At the very beginning of his Wealth of Nations, ADAM
SMITH takes great pain in pointing out that it is « the skill,
dexterity and judgment with which labour is applied » which
is by far the pre-eminent factor accounting for the wealth
of nations, « whatever be the soil, climate or extent of territory
» (!). DAvip Ricarpo in his turn, again on the very
first pages of his Principles, sets out this opposition in terms
of types of commodities. « There are some commodities — he
says — the value of which is determined by scarcity alone. »
These are the goods which are given by nature. We may call
them the commodities of the scarcity type. RicarDo says that
they « form a very small part of the mass of commodities daily
exchanged in the market. » And he continues: « By far the
greatest part of those goods, which are the object of desire,
are produced by labour; and they may be multiplied, not in
one country alone, but in many, almost without any assignable
limit, if we are disposed to bestow the labour necessary to
obtain them. » (?) We may call these, the commodities of the
production type. It is on these commodities that Ricarpo
concentrated his analysis.
The whole economic theory that followed preferred, on the
other hand, to abandon this approach and to go on to taking
exactly the opposite view. The stream of economic thought
which came to dominate the second part of last century (Marginalism)
and which still now-a-days provides the backbone
of most of contemporary economics, appears as a tendency to
concentrate on the other type of commodities: the commodities
(1) ADAM SMITH, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth
of Nations, ed. by E. Cannan, p. I.
(2) Davip Ricarpo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation,
p. 12. ‘The references are to the edition by PrEro Srarra, with the collaboration
of M.H. Dos, The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo,
in 10 vls., Cambridge, 105I.
10] Pasinetti - pag. 6
