Note 197-3 — Chapter VI

Anyone who carefully reads all the five divisions of Ricardo's first chapter will soon find that this great thinker rightly understood the foregoing, although the great abstractness and hypothetical nature of his conclusions might easily lead the reader astray. The proposition which closes the second part, and which has been so frequently misunderstood by his disciples, can be maintained only on the supposition that the prices of all commodities hitherto have been made up of equal proportions of rent, capital and wages. But think of Brussels lace and South American skins!