《A Short History of Economic Thought, Chapter 11, Section 1》 notes, but the content is actually all from Feng Huo:
The bourgeois and petty-bourgeois doctrines are numerous, but the proletarian doctrine is only one, which is Marxism. This is because there is only one truth, but many fallacies. The bourgeoisie always distort reality for their own interests, while the proletariat is the most scientific, most progressive, and free of any private interests.
Mercantilism, as the earliest political economy, contributed to circulation and exchange. By the stage of William Petty, the idea of “labor forming the value of commodities” had already emerged. It aligns with the early stage of capitalist development, focusing on the circulation of money, and holds the view that only money is true wealth, not the commodities themselves. This reflects the mindset of commercial bourgeoisie, whose goal is to accumulate wealth through trade.
With the development of capitalism, classical political economy, the peak of bourgeois political economy, appeared. Its representatives are Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The core is the labor theory of value, which is its most important contribution. It admits that the value of all wealth and commodities in the world comes from labor. Their doctrines are dualistic: they acknowledge that the value of commodities partly consists of labor, but do not fully admit this, because they also want to defend capitalism. Therefore, their doctrines still have unscientific aspects, especially their reluctance to admit the issue of surplus value production and the fact that the bourgeoisie profits through exploitation, trying to bypass the contradiction between wages and profits.
At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, the bourgeoisie had not yet come to power; they still fought with the landlord class and allied with the working people. Therefore, at this time, classical political economy still to some extent adhered to the labor theory of value, aiming to deny the legitimacy of landlord rent exploitation and create theoretical grounds to defeat the landlord class. However, starting in the early 1830s, the bourgeoisie in Britain and France gained power, and the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat became the main contradiction. Their political economy also turned into ways to safeguard capitalist interests, moving completely towards reaction. The purpose of vulgar economics was to defend capitalist interests; whatever was favorable to the bourgeoisie, they would say. At this point, the important thing was not which theory was scientific, but which theory aligned with bourgeois interests.