Socialist critiques of value theory were multiplying even before Marx wrote Capital. A group called the ‘Ricardian socialists’ used Ricardo’s labour theory of value to demand that workers get better wages. They included the Irishman William Thompson (1775–1833), Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) and John Gray (1799–1883), both British, and John Bray (1809–97), who was born in the US but worked for part of his life in Britain. Together, they made the obvious argument that if the value of commodities derives from labour, the revenue from their sale should go to workers.
