Part One: Commodities and Money
Chapters 1, 2, and 3 are a theoretical discussion of the commodity, value, exchange, and the genesis of money. As Marx writes, "Beginnings are always difficult in all sciences ... the section that contains the analysis of commodities, will therefore present the greatest difficulty." The modern reader is often perplexed about Marx going on about "one coat is equal to twenty yards of linen..". Professor John Kenneth Galbraith reminds us that "the purchase of a coat by an average citizen was an action comparable in modern times to the purchase of an automobile or even a house."
Read more about this topic: Capital, Volume I
Famous quotes containing the words commodities and/or money:
“Most works of art are effectively treated as commodities and most artists, even when they justly claim quite other intentions, are effectively treated as a category of independent craftsmen or skilled workers producing a certain kind of marginal commodity.”
—Raymond Williams (1921–1988)
“Under the rules of a society that cannot distinguish between profit and profiteering, between money defined as necessity and money defined as luxury, murder is occasionally obligatory and always permissible.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)