¶ … labor force has always been a prime concern amongst classical political economists, starting with Petty and continuing to theorists such as Adam Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, and Marx. Labor implies the activity of production that goes into producing the good of value but whilst some theorists, such as Smith, have focused on the outcome of the labor activity, others, such as famously Marx, have considered the conditions of the laborer himself. Some theories too, such as those of Ricardo have been primarily descriptive. Others, such as those of Marx and Malthus, have included prescriptive components. Ultimately, all classical political economic theories have included prescription of better understanding and dealing with the human race on an economic scheme. William Petty, observing Dutch laborers at their shipyards, noticed how they performed their work better than anyone else and how employing the method that they used, owners could utilize cheap and unskilled labor thereby doubling their profits. The Dutch shipping laborer, in contradistinction to the method employed at the time would divide their work into several tasks with groups of workers performing the same task on several ships at oen go. The common method during that period was for the entire team to work on oen ship and at its completion to move to another. Stuck with the cost and time-cutting efficacy of the Dutch method, Petty experimented its possibility with a survey in Ireland and found similar beneficial results. He went on to introduce this tool as efficacious way of conducting business.

Adam Smith, founder of Western capitalism, popularized his method of the 'Invisible hand' in the Wealth of Nations, 1776. To Smith, influenced by French writers, countries succeeded and became wealthy via competition. Each individual was out for his own good. There was no spirit of benevolence. Each sought to protect and fend for himself. And by doing so, they struggled to compete and better themselves (or differentiate themselves) against the other in order to attract customers. Unintentionally,...

Lack of government interference would allow competition to continue unchecked culminating in more money in national coffers.
Ricardo, a disciple of Smith, used his labor principle to reduce the essence of the commodity of exchange to the principle of labor. Smith, too, had seen labor as the prime principle of value (seeing it as inflexible and consistent and, wishing to base his theory of exchange on a consistent unfluctuating variable). Smith had, however, added his Adding-up Theory of Value where rent, profit, and wages defined value in a capitalist system that depended on the intangibles of proprietorship and landlords. This led to contradictions in that Smith's Adding-up Theory of Value was not addressed to explain the actual day-to-day fluctuations in market price. So what you have is a differnce between market price and natural price, and the measure of value becomes equivocated with the cause of value. Ricardo solved that dilemma by pointing out that labor had manifold definitions and varied according to a spectrum. Labor could be qualitative and intense existing on a significant duration of time, or it may be short-lived and accomplished by machines. According to Ricardo, therefore, the value of labor (and hence the value of a product or service -- commodity of exchange) depended on the quality and quantity of invested labor.

Malthus was the gloomy theorist seeing society as demarcated in two: The wealthy upper class that could rationally deal with their ranks, thinning them when need be and rationally allocating and transferring their wealth to their particular generations, and the poorer, less 'moral' disadvantaged class who sucked up the resources of the earth. The poor…