Classical economists once priced everything by the labor it took to make it

Before the 1870s marginal revolution, Adam Smith and David Ricardo argued a good's value tracked the labor needed to produce it, not how badly anyone wanted it. The theory struggled to explain premiums for scarcity, skill or luxury taste, and was largely dethroned by marginal utility, though Marx built his entire critique of capitalism on top of it.

— David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation — 1817