It is not true that on an exchange of commodities we give value for value. On the contrary, each of the two contracting parties in every case, gives a less for a greater value.… If we really exchanged equal values, neither party could make a profit. And yet, they both gain, or ought to gain. Why? The value of a thing consists solely in its relation to our wants. What is more to the one is less to the other, and vice versa.
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Le Commerce et le Gouvernement (1776), as quoted in Karl Marx’s Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 5.
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When I learned that an old friend from grad school was trying both to assemble a proper collection of economics texts and to learn more of the history of economic thought, I got for him a copy from the Liberty Fund edition of Commerce and Government Considered in their Mutual Relationship.