Introduction

This chapter provides textual evidence indicating that Sraffa's famous corn–profit interpretation of the early Ricardo (Sraffa, 1951, p. xxxi; 1960, p. 93) applies in fact to T. R. Malthus. Faccarello has observed: ‘If indeed such a corn–profit model was really formulated, it took shape, for a brief period of time, in Malthus's fancy’ (1982, p. 134), an allusion to the possible attribution to Ricardo by Malthus of such a model in the early correspondence. I shall demonstrate, rather, a positive adherence by Malthus – the ‘mature’ Malthus of the Principles and thereafter – to the priority of distribution over pricing, with the profit rate determined in the wage–goods (corn) sector as a ratio of physically homogenous output and input to which profit rates in other industries adjust by way of their terms of trade with corn. Various criticisms of this interpretation will be considered.

The sense of Malthus's adherence to a corn–profit model must be well understood. Malthus was aware that the profit rate is conventionally defined as ratio of values, and indeed in his chapter ‘Of the Profits of Capital’ in the Principles of Political Economy he identifies the profit rate with ‘the proportion which the difference between the value of the advance and the value of the commodity produced bears to the value of the advances’ (1820, p. 294; cf. a similar formulation in 1836, p. 263, discussed in Section 4).