Kitap 5
11
It is therefore necessary that all commodities shall be measured by some one standard, as was said before. And this standard is in reality demand, which is what holds everything together, since if men cease to have wants or if their wants alter, exchange will go on no longer, or will be on different lines. But demand has come to be conventionally represented by money; this is why money is called nomisma (customary currency), because it does not exist by nature but by custom (nomos), and can be altered and rendered uselessἄχρηστον also connotes worthless, but an obsolete coin retains some value as metal. at will.
12
There will therefore be reciprocal proportion when the products have been equated, so that as farmer is to shoemaker,See 5.10, first note. so may the shoemaker’s product be to the farmer’s product. And when they exchange their products they must reduce them to the form of a proportion, otherwise one of the two extremes will have both the excessesThat is after any unfair exchange one party has too much by just the amount by which the other has too little. I ought to have given you ten shillings more or something worth that. Then I have ten shillings too much, and you have ten too little; these two tens are my two “excesses”; in respect of the exchange. I am better off then you by twice ten (Richards). Cf. 4.10-12.; whereas when they have their own,For this proverbial phrase see 4.8,14. they then are equal, and can form an association together, because equality in this sense can be established in their case (farmer A, food C, shoemaker B, shoemaker’s product equalized DOr shoemaker’s product D multiplied to equivalence with C (Blunt).); whereas if it were impossible for reciprocal proportion to be effected in this way, there could be no association between them.
