A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy |
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abstract Adam Smith appears become bourgeois bullion buyer capital capitalist circulation of commodities circulation of money commodity owner concrete category constitutes consumption culation currency David Ricardo determined distribution duction economists embodied English exchange value existence expressed fact function gold and silver hand hoarding ideal individual latter material means of payment means of purchase measure of value medium of circulation metamorphosis modities money in circulation natural ounce of gold owners of commodities political economy pound pounds sterling precious metals prices of commodities process of circulation process of exchange proportion quantity of gold quantity of labor-time quantity of money realized relations of production represent Ricardo seller shillings social labor sphere of circulation standard of price Steuart tion token of value universal equivalent universal labor-time use-value value of commodities value of gold value of money wealth yard of linen καὶ
Popular passages
Page 12 - In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.
Page 13 - ... The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production — antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from conditions surrounding the life of individuals in society.
Page 12 - At a certain stage of their development, the material forces of production in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production...
Page 12 - No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself.
Page 57 - I have long aimed at) to express myself in Terms of Number, Weight, or Measure ; to use only Arguments of Sense, and to consider only such Causes, as have visible Foundations in Nature...
Page 68 - In his ordinary state of health, strength, and spirits ; in the ordinary degree of his skill and dexterity, he must always lay down the same portion of his ease, his liberty, and his happiness. The price which he pays must always be the same, whatever may be the quantity of goods which he receives in return for it. Of these, indeed, it may sometimes purchase a greater and sometimes a smaller quantity ; but it is their value which varies, not that of the labour which purchases them.
Page 268 - Man is in the most literal sense of the word a zoon politikon, not only a social animal, but an animal which can develop into an individual only in society. Production by isolated individuals outside of society— something which might happen as an exception to a civilized man who by accident got into the wilderness and already dynamically possessed within himself the forces of society— is as great an absurdity as the idea of the development of language without individuals living together and talking...
Page 12 - ... disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself.
Page 11 - I was led by my studies to the conclusion that legal relations as well as forms of state could neither be understood by themselves, nor explained by the so-called general progress of the human mind, but that they are rooted in the material conditions of life...
Page 246 - England, in consequence of a bad harvest, would come under the case. . . of a country having been deprived of a part of its commodities, and therefore requiring a diminished amount of circulating medium. The currency which was before equal to her payments would now become superabundant and relatively cheap...