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Doctrinal Contest III

This chapter completes the study of doctrinal contest between Malthus and Ricardo by considering their rival treatments of profits. Ricardo’s account gave a central role to his idea of the ‘natural wage’, in which he adapted Malthus’s arguments on population for his own purposes. Ricardo also completed his destruction of Smith’s arguments regarding capital allocation and the quasi-providential properties of the system of natural liberty, as expressed in Smith’s overly quoted notion of an ‘invisible hand’. Ricardo’s uncomprehending reading of Wealth of Nations combined with his doctrinal correction of Smith appears, in hindsight, to have been a toxic reception context for Smith’s work. Malthus responded to Ricardo’s account of profits by claiming to have bested him both theoretically and practically by keeping his analysis open to all causal factors and by being able to account for the relevant facts of Britain’s commercial history. Once again, Malthus targeted the hastiness of Ricardo the theorist in attempting to simplify what could not be simplified. In his response, Ricardo had few rhetorical resources with which to defend the legitimacy of abstract theory.