[to get the same canoe, more or less…]
1991 1991-09Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 19 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 19
to get the same canoe, more or less.
So we see that a bushel of apples represents the value in this new sense of one pair of shoes. A canoe represents the value of 100 pairs of shoes or the value of 100 bushels of apples. Of course, we can look at it the other way around and say that the value of one canoe is represented by 100 pairs of shoes or by 100 bushels of apples.
This kind of value is called exchange value. The difference between exchange value and the value of a thing in terms of its usefulness can be seen by looking at the two different values of, say, both a gallon of tap water on the one hand, and of a large cut diamond on the other.
The usefulness of water cannot be denied. We would die if we couldn't get any water for three days or so. But we could live quite well (at least most of us could) without the diamond. None of us, however, would think of exchanging a large cut diamond for one gallon of water! We say that the diamond is "worth" much more than that. How is value determined?
Products of human labor that are made to be exchanged in the market are called commodities. Because commodities are exchanged in the market in definite proportions, it is clear that their "worth" or exchange value is a measure of something quite definite. What is it?
----- pull-quotes -----
About Marxism By Barry Sheppard Sheppare