La teoria del valore di Ferdinando Galiani alla luce di una versione inedita di Della Moneta (ferdinando Galiani' theory of value in the light of an unpublished version of Della Moneta)

The well-know manuscript of Ferdinando Galiani’s Della Moneta has been neglected for long time by researchers, despite the role it can play in shedding light on some parts of the published text, which appear particularly obscure or expressed in extreme synthesis and such as to lead to diÄerent interpretations of Galiani’s theory of value. The view that considers Galiani a precursor of the marginal utility theory is widely established in literature ; on the other hand, less diÄused is the thesis, supported by Marx, that brings back the Neapolitan abbot’s theory to the labour theory of value ; equally rare it is the opinion (pointed out by Schumpeter) that considers Galiani’s theory of value like a synthesis between objective (labour) and subjective (utility) elements. By analysing Galiani’s manuscript the present paper supports two arguments: first, textual references of the manuscript strengthen the interpretation that considers Galiani’s theory of value a synthesis between the utility and the labour theory of value ; second, Galiani is not able to build a bridge between the deductive analysis of the components of value and the reality of market prices; this theoretical failure opens the road to the mono-causal explanations of value, based either on utility (Turgot, Condillac) or on labour (Smith).