Commodity

“ Neither can I discover exactly what connexion the constant labour necessary to produce the wages and profits on a commodity has with its value. If it be a good measure for one commodity, it must be for all commodities; and, as well as valuing wheat by the constant quantity of labour necessary to produce the particular quantity given to the workman, together with the profit of the farmer on that particular quantity, I might value cloth or any other thing by the same rule. ”

“ You have yourself stated, as an objection to my view on this subject, that a commodity produced with labour and capital united, cannot be a measure of value for any other commodities than such as are produced precisely under the same circumstances, and in this I have agreed that you are substantially correct. ”

“ Workers make shoes; bakers of bread are working men or women; houses, street cars, trains, palaces, bridges, stoves—all are the product of the laboring man. All commodities are the product of labor.
There is one common thing which all commodities contain. This is labor. A commodity only has value (exchange value) because it contains human labor.
Horses are commodities, cows are commodities, gold is a commodity. Human labor has been spent in producing all these. Labor-power is also a commodity, the result of human labor in the past. ”

“ It might seem that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labor bestowed upon its production, the lazier a man, or clumsier a man, the more valuable his commodity, because the greater the time of labor required for finishing the commodity. ”

“ VII. Every commodity of which the supply can be indefinitely increased by labour and capital, exchanges for other things proportionally to the cost necessary for producing and bringing to market the most costly portion of the supply required. ”

“ In every society, the price of every commodity finally resolves itself into some one or other, or all of those three parts; and in every improved society, all the three enter, more or less, as component parts, into the price of the far greater part of commodities. ”

“ If the quantity of labour realized in commodities, regulate their exchangeable value, every increase of the quantity of labour must augment the value of that commodity on which it is exercised, as every diminution must lower it. ”

“ Such a selected commodity becoming in the manner already explained an actual medium passing from hand to hand in Exchanges, impresses its name on the minds of men as an ideal measure of services, which measure they can use, and do constantly use, without handling at the time the commodity itself. ”

“ We should then have a commodity always produced under one and the same combination of all the circumstances which affect permanent value. Such a commodity would be by no means constant in its exchange value ”

“ A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use-value, something useful. This property of a commodity is independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities. When treating of use-value, we always assume to be dealing with definite quantities, such as dozens of watches, yards of linen, or tons of iron. The use-values of commodities furnish the material for a special study, that of the commercial knowledge of commodities. ”

“ Since no commodity can stand in the relation of equivalent to itself, and thus turn its own bodily shape into the expression of its own value, every commodity is compelled to choose some other commodity for its equivalent, and to accept the use-value, that is to say, the bodily shape of that other commodity as the form of its own value. ”

“ In order for a commodity to derive value from consumption our possessor of money must be fortunate enough to discover a commodity whose use-value has the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose consumption would imply the expenditure of labor and thus be value-producing. ”

“ In comparing therefore the value of the same commodity, at different periods of time, the consideration of the comparative skill and intensity of labour, required for that particular commodity, needs scarcely to be attended to, as it operates equally at both pe14riods. ”

“ The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labor which it enables him to purchase or command. Labor, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.
The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. ”

“ But every commodity has a twofold aspect, that of use value and exchange value.2
A commodity is first of all, in the language of English Pg 20economists, “any thing necessary, useful or pleasant in life,” an object of human wants, a means of existence in the broadest sense of the word. This property of commodities to serve as use-values coincides with their natural palpable existence. Wheat e. g. is a distinct use-value differing from the use-values cotton, glass, paper, etc. Use-value has a value only in use and is realized only in the process of consumption. ”

“ And, first, I premise that labour is, as I have already intimated, a commodity, and, as such, an article of trade. If I am right in this notion, then labour must be subject to all the laws and principles of trade, and not to regulation foreign to them, and that may be totally inconsistent with those principles and those laws. When any commodity is carried to market, it is not the necessity of the vender, but the necessity of the purchaser, that raises the price. The extreme want of the seller has rather (by the nature of things with which we shall in vain contend) ”

“ The whole quantity of industry annually employed in order to bring any commodity to market, naturally suits itself in this manner to the effectual demand. It naturally aims at bringing always that precise quantity thither which may be sufficient to supply, and no more than supply, that demand. ”

“ To equalize, therefore, their expectation of profit, the one commodity must rise in price, or the other must fall, or both.343 Commodities made chiefly by immediate labor must rise in value, as compared with those which are chiefly made by machinery. ”

“ Whether we were dealing with the price of an ordinary commodity, with joint products, land or capital, we came across relationships which seemed altogether more fundamental than our present industrial system ”

“ But since the commodity value exists in gold also, itself being a commodity, a new factor arises in the society which produces and exchanges commodities, a factor with new social functions and operations. ”

“ The one commodity may be called upon to yield profit during a longer period of time than the other. The example by which this case is usually illustrated is that of wine. Suppose a quantity of wine, and a quantity of cloth, made by equal amounts of labour, and that labour paid at the same rate. ”

“ But not to anticipate, we will content ourselves with yet another example relating to the commodity form. Could commodities themselves speak, they would say: Our use-value may be a thing that interests men. ”

“ The imported commodity is always paid for, directly or indirectly, with the produce of our own industry: that industry being, at the same time rendered more productive, since, with the same labour and outlay, we are enabled to possess ourselves of a greater quantity of the article. ”

“ In stating the principles which regulate exchangeable value and price, we should carefully distinguish between those variations which belong to the commodity itself, and those which are occasioned by a variation in the medium in which value is estimated, or price expressed. ”

“ The interests of the consumer of any commodity whatsoever should always prevail over the interests of the producer. ”

“ The first and chief is the overlooking the fact that all exchangeableness of commodity, or effective demand for it, depends on the sum of capacity for its use existing, here or elsewhere. The book we cannot read, or picture we take no delight in, may indeed be called part of our wealth, in so far as we have power of exchanging either for something we like better. ”

“ These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. ”

“ A commodity is first converted into money, then again into a commodity, thereby enabling another commodity to become money, etc.; or, seller becomes buyer, whereby another commodity owner turns seller. ”

“ Wherefore to return to the matter in hand, I say, that the Quantity of Commodity produced, and the Quantity of the ——— shews the effects of the Land; and the number of People living thereupon, with the Quality of their housing, shews the Value of the Commodity; for one days delicate and exquisit Food may be worth ten of ordinary. ”

“ The Value of these Commodities confirm, in the long run, to their Cost of Production through the operation of Demand and Supply. The latent influence by which the values of things are made to conform in the long run to the cost of production is the variation that would otherwise take place in the supply of the commodity. ”

“ Suppose that, in the expectation that some commodity will rise in price, he determines, not only to invest in it all his ready money, but to take up on credit, from the producers or importers, as much of it as their opinion of his resources will enable him to obtain. ”

“ Let us suppose that he deals in nails, wire, cotton cloth, eggs, butter, hams, sugar, and moonshine whiskey, and that his customers also make and use most of these things, using him as a central clearing house in their rude division of labor. Without a common measure of values, it is necessary for him to keep in mind the price of every commodity in terms of every other commodity. ”

“ Economic growth has liberated societies from the natural pressures that forced them into an immediate struggle for survival; but they have not yet been liberated from their liberator. The commodity’s independence has spread to the entire economy it now dominates. This economy has transformed the world, but it has merely transformed it into a world dominated by the economy. ”

“ The necessary complement of this ceaseless waste of commodity most precious to organic life, and which must be replaced, or the population could not exist, is the purchase by this country of that same material from other countries less populous than our own, and which can, therefore, at present spare it. This we do to the amount of much more than half a million pounds sterling per annum. ”

“ But a commodity must be something more than an object satisfying human wants. Such objects are simple use-values, but commodities are something else in addition to simple use-values. The manna upon which the pilgrim exiles of the Bible story were fed, for instance, was not a commodity, though it fulfilled the conditions of this first part of our definition by satisfying human wants. We must carry our definition further, therefore. In addition to use-value, then, a commodity must possess exchange-value. ”

“ A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. ”

“ It is evident that a commodity possessing all these advantages must have some intrinsic qualities which all exchangers would recognise—that it must be a standard of value—at once a commodity possessing real value, and a measure of all other values. ”