Page:Shop Talks on Economics.djvu/15



The value of a commodity is determined by the necessary social labor contained in it. If some one told me that an overcoat was equal in value to the value of (or contained in) a suit of clothes, I would know that the overcoat and suit of clothes were equal in value because they contained equal quantities of the same common thing—labor.

Generally speaking the value of four pairs of trousers is about equal to the value of one coat. Why is the coat more valuable than the trousers? And what determines the measure of value when we come to exchange commodities?

You exchange your labor-power—to the boss—for perhaps $2 in gold a day, and in turn the gold is exchanged for the necessities of life—food, clothing and shelter. Why do these commodities exchange for each other?

As we learned before, labor is the measure of value. The coat, mentioned above, exchanges for four pairs of trousers because the coat contains four times the quantity of social labor that one pair of the trousers contains.

The necessary social labor contained in a commodity (shoes, coats, gold, bread, your labor power,