ENGL 200 D: Reading Literature: Literature in the Marketplace

My first major paper is going to address the second question, “What makes labor value difficult to establish?” I’m going to use Smith’s Wealth of Nations, chapter I and Mandeville’s Grumbling Hive. My overall point is that labor value depends on what aspect of labour you are looking at, be it the amount/difficulty of labour, the final outcome, or the effect on economy.

Both Smith and Mandeville agree that individuals are naturally lazy and aim to have the most gain from as little work as possible. Smith says we do this through the division of labour, and once we focus on one task, we will find the easiest/quickest way to do it. According to Mandeville, this easiest way is through cheat and deceit. He provides many examples of actual workers, from fashion designers to lawyers and doctors. When the quality of their work is poor, so is the quality of their goods and services. However, the hive thrives on this and the value of their community is very high. So can we put a value on their labour when it’s hard to decide if it’s even good or bad?

In Wealth of Nations, Smith demonstrates that when we specialize on one task, production efficiency increases. He uses pin-making as an example: when a few people specialize in each step of pin-making, they can make many more overall pins than if everyone made entire pins themselves. In this situation, each individual does a lot less and a lot easier work, but overall, the output efficiency is better so this type of labour is valuable. But if one person leaves, it will not significantly affect production so is each individual’s labour value decreased? It’s hard to define the value of labour because it’s value is different from each point of view.

One problem I have is that in chapter V of Wealth of Nations, Smith says that labour is the only accurate measure of value because it will never change. I feel like this contradicts my whole essay, so I’m not sure if I should just ignore it and not bring it up, or if I need to address it. And if I need to, I’m  not sure how I would go about doing that.