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According to Sraffa (1951), the role of Ricardo’s standard of value is to prevent the prices of the aggregates to change as distribution changes, thus allowing the author to rest on the labour theory of value for the determination of distribution. As we argue, the role conceived by Sraffa for Ricardo’s standard of value fits with the characteristics of the invariable measure defined in the 3rd edition of the Principles, i.e. of the ‘average commodity’, but differs from the characteristics that the same standard had in the previous editions of that work, where it is described as a commodity produced with the highest, rather than average, proportion of present to anticipated labour. Hence Sraffa’s interpretation, focusing on the ‘average commodity’, cannot give account of the role played by the measure of value Ricardo adopts in the 1817 edition of the Principles.
In trying to fill this apparent gap, we develop a different interpretation of the 1st edition of the Principles which calls into question the generally accepted view of a central position of the labour theory of value. Focusing on the first formulation of Ricardo’s main work, our interpretation starts from a careful reconstruction of the numerical examples of value changes found in that edition, in order to show that the measure of value adopted therein bears (as also noted by Blaug and Hollander) some analogies with the single basic product characterizing the logical framework of the Essay on Profits. Indeed, that commodity is produced, by assumption, with the highest proportion of present to anticipated labour, and once it is used as the measure of value, it is invariable in value and prevents price movements to be in conflict with the inverse wage-profit relation—as the value of any aggregate relative to wages could not but fall as wages rise. Evidently, the standard of value of the 1st edition of the Principles could not bring Ricardo back to the labour theory, precisely because it implies that the value of aggregates would change with distribution.
We therefore conclude by arguing that the logical framework of the 1817 edition of the Principles is grounded not on the labour theory of value, as in Sraffa’s view, but rather, as in the Essay, on the intuition of an analytical device for dealing with the interrelation between prices and distribution. In fact, Ricardo (1817) appears even closer to Sraffa (1960) than emerges from Sraffa (1951).

Ricardo, Principles, Sraffa, Invariable measure of value, corn model