Have you noticed that your gold (or money) exchanges for fewer commodities nowadays than it did ten years ago?
Wheat is produced for a world market. Do you think wheat has decreased much in value in the past ten years as compared to the decrease in value (or social labor necessary) of steel?
We believe it takes very nearly as much labor-power to produce a bushel of wheat (on the AVERAGE) as it did in 1900; hence its value must have remained nearly the same.
Why then will a hundred bushels of wheat today exchange for MORE gold dollars than it did in 1900?
If the VALUE of both commodities had remained the same and no monopolist controlled the world's wheat or gold supply, they would exchange upon the same basis as formerly. That is, the same amount of gold would exchange for (or buy) the same amount of wheat.
Does the decreased value of GOLD result in the farmer getting a higher price (or more gold) in exchange for his wheat crop?
(Do not forget that, as Marx says, if we cannot explain profits upon the basis that all commodities exchange at their Values, we cannot explain them at all.)
Our next lesson will take up Surplus Value, which explains how capitalists make profits even though all commodities exchange at their values.
Remember that we do not sell our labor. We sell our strength to work our laboring power, our labor power. Labor is the expenditure of labor-power. See Value, Price and Profit, pages 71, 72 and 73. When we apply for a job, we do not offer to sell our WORK, but our strength to WORK. The commodities we make are crystallizations of our work or of our LABOR, but it is our strength to labor, or laboring power—our labor-power which we sell to the boss.
