Value and Wealth

Abstract

In this chapter I will show that the physiocrats did not regard wealth and revenue as mere collections of physical quantities of primary goods, as is usually believed.¹ For Quesnay the amount of consumable agricultural produce is the basis of the prosperity of the people, but only the value magnitude of wealth can be used to compare the economic power of France with that of other countries. In order to become part of the nation’s wealth products must pass through markets, where they are exchanged according to certain monetary prices. Quesnay contends that a specific concept of price — that which rules the ‘sales at first hand’ — must be employed to measure the country’s wealth. He uses this particular idea of price to deny the quality of ‘productive’ to those exchanges that take place after the first sale of a product, which he calls ‘resale trade’.