Relationship between value and price

The notion of "value" developed over the ages to connote the variability of price. It was spontaneously assumed that if price varies, there must be an underlying, more constant essence of which price is a phenomenal manifestation. Both seminal and representative of various attempts at establishing the foundations of the concept of value, Adam Smith hesitated between the "additive theory of value" and the embedded work-time interpretation. In the latter, expanded by Ricardo and Marx, value expresses quantities of work-time embedded in a commodity. Smith's attempt aborts when he fails to find the means for comparing the various qualities of various work-times. To succeed, Smith's embedded work-time interpretation of value needs to be complemented by Aristotle's theory of price, where the quality of a piece of work-time equates with the quality of its performer in the social order. Price in Aristotle expresses the relative status of purchaser and seller as the rate at which their respective work-times are traded. In so doing, and long before Marx, Aristotle identifies the economy with the political system.