Commodity Quotes

“He who controls the spice controls the universe.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“War is a bazaar where lives are traded like any other commodity: chocolate or bullets or parachute silk.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Civilians are like beans; you buy 'em as needed for any job which merely requires skill and savvy.
But you can't buy fighting spirit.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“Economic growth has liberated societies from the natural pressures that forced them into an immediate struggle for survival; but they have not yet been liberated from their liberator. The commodity’s independence has spread to the entire economy it now dominates. This economy has transformed the world, but it has merely transformed it into a world dominated by the economy.”
― Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

“Value your time poorly and you will be poor. When time is wasted as a lifestyle choice you will be stranded in places you don't want to be.
Take a look around. How do your friends, family, and peers value their time? Are they standing in line to save four bucks? Are they driving 40 minutes to save 10 dollars? Are they parked on the sofa anxiously waiting to see who wins Dancing With the Stars?”
― M.J. DeMarco, The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime!

“In our modern world, this elemental quality of storytelling is denied. We live today in a world in which everything has its place and function and nothing is left out of place. Storytelling is thus at a discount and like everything else in a world ruled by the laws of exchange value, literature is required to submit itself to the requirements of the market and must learn, like any other commodity, to adapt and serve needs that lie outside of itself and its concrete value. It is forced to stand not for itself but for an ideological cause of one sort or another, whether it be political, social or literary. It cannot exist for itself: like everything else it has to be justified. And for this very reason the power of storytelling is automatically devalued. Literature is reduced to the status of complimentary utilitarian functions: as a pastime to provide distraction and entertainment, or as a heightened activity that would claim to explore 'great truths' about the human condition.”
― Michael Richardson, Dedalus Book of Surrealism 2: The Myth of the World

“A mental disease has swept the planet: banalization. Everyone is hypnotized by production and comfort -- sewage system, elevator, bathroom, washing machine.

This state of affairs, which arose out of a struggle against poverty, overshoots its ultimate goal -- the liberation of humanity from material cares -- and becomes an obsessive image hanging over the present. Between love and a garbage disposal, young people of all countries have made their choice and prefer the garbage disposal. A complete and sudden change of spirit has become essential, by bringing to light forgotten desires and creating entirely new ones. And by an intensive propaganda in favor of these desires.

Gilles Ivain (aka Ivan Chtcheglov)”
― Tom McDonough, The Situationists and the City: A Reader

“I think Jay is in import and export business as his cards say, but he finally found that the second most valuable commodity today is information."
"And?"
"The most valuable?"
"People with information," I suggested.”
― Len Deighton, The Ipcress File

“Mystery is a commodity for society that willing to buy it.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“Truth is commodity in political consumption.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

“Great writers and my mom never used food as an object. Instead it was a medium, a catalyst to mend hearts, to break down barriers, to build relationships. Mom's cooking fed body and soul. She used to quip, "If the food is good, there's no need to talk about the weather." That was my mantra for years---food as meal and conversation, a total experience.
I leaned my forehead against the glass and thought again about Emma and the arrowroot. Mom had highlighted it in my sophomore English class. "Jane Fairfax knew it was given with a selfish heart. Emma didn't care about Jane, she just wanted to appear benevolent."
"That girl was stupid. She was poor and should've accepted the gift." The football team had hooted for their spokesman.
"That girl's name was Jane Fairfax, and motivation always matters." Mom's glare seared them.
I tried to remember the rest of the lesson, but couldn't. I think she assigned a paper, and the football team stopped chuckling.
Another memory flashed before my eyes. It was from that same spring; Mom was baking a cake to take to a neighbor who'd had a knee replacement.
"We don't have enough chocolate." I shut the cabinet door.
"We're making an orange cake, not chocolate."
"Chocolate is so much better."
"Then we're lucky it's not for you. Mrs. Conner is sad and she hurts and it's spring. The orange cake will not only show we care, it'll bring sunshine and spring to her dinner tonight. She needs that."
"It's just a cake."
"It's never just a cake, Lizzy."
I remembered the end of that lesson: I rolled my eyes----Mom loathed that----and received dish duty. But it turned out okay; the batter was excellent.
I shoved the movie reel of scenes from my head. They didn't fit in my world. Food was the object. Arrowroot was arrowroot. Cake was cake. And if it was made with artisan dark chocolate and vanilla harvested by unicorns, all the better. People would crave it, order it, and pay for it. Food wasn't a metaphor---it was the commodity---and to couch it in other terms was fatuous. The one who prepared it best won.”
― Katherine Reay, Lizzy and Jane

“For the greater part of human history, and in places in the world today, common resources were the rule. But some invented a different story, a social construct in which everything ins a commodity to be bought and sold. The market economy story has spread like wildfire, with uneven results for human well-being and devastation for the natural world. But it it just a story we have told ourselves and we are free to tell another, to reclaim the old one.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“Solopreneurs will rise because freelancers will become commodities to utilize.”
― Richie Norton

“Knowledge is the most prized commodity in the entire universe, and it is infinite in its commodity. But to humans, money is, even though it is extremely limited to the majority of us.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“The Good thing about Money is that it can buy just anything.

The bad thing about it is that it can buy 'YOU' too!”
― Ramana Pemmaraju

“All commodities, as values, are realized human labours.”
― Karl Marx

“Life has become a throw away commodity.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“The social activity of
commodities on the market is to capitalist society what collective
intelligence is to a socialist society.”
― Rudolph Hiferding, Finance Capital: A study in the latest phase of capitalist development

“It [Money] renders commodities directly
commensurable by becoming their standard of value.”
― Rudolph Hiferding, Finance Capital: A study in the latest phase of capitalist development

“Every commodity has value in so far as it incorporates
socially necessary labour time, and is the outcome of a social process
of production. It enters the process of exchange as a bearer of value.
This is the sense of Marx's remark that, `the act of exchange gives to
the commodity converted into money, not its value, but its specific
value form'. /Capital, /vol. I, p. 103. [MECW 35, p101]”
― Rudolph Hiferding, Finance Capital: A study in the latest phase of capitalist development

“Exchange converts a good into a commodity, an object no longer intended
for the satisfaction of an individual need or brought into existence and
vanishing with that need. On the contrary, it is intended for society,
and its fate, now dependent on the laws which govern the social
circulation of goods, can be far more capricious than that of Odysseus;
for what is one-eyed Polyphemus compared with the argus-eyed customs
officials of Newport, or the fair Circe compared with the German meat
inspectors? It has become a commodity because its producers participate
in a specific social relationship in which they have to confront each
other as independent producers. Originally a natural, quite
unproblematic thing, a good comes to express a social relation, acquires
a social aspect. It is a product of labour, no longer merely a natural
quality but a social phenomenon. We must therefore discover the law
which governs this society as a producing and working community.
Individual labour now appears in a new aspect, as part of the total
labour force over which society disposes, and only from this point of
view does it appear as value-creating labour.”
― Rudolph Hiferding, Finance Capital: A study in the latest phase of capitalist development

“Exchange is thus accessible to analysis because it not only satisfies
individual needs, but is also a social necessity which makes individual
need its instrument while at the same time limiting its satisfaction.
For a need can be satisfied only to the extent that social necessity
will permit. It is of course a presupposition, for human society is
inconceivable without the satisfaction of individual needs. This does
not mean, however, that exchange is simply a function of individual
need, as indeed it would be in a collectivist economy, but that
individual needs are satisfied only to the extent that exchange allows
them to participate in the product of society. It is this participation
which determines exchange. The latter appears to be simply a
quantitative ratio between two things,[4] <#n4> which is determined when
this quantity is determined. The quantity which is turned over in
exchange, however, counts only as a part of social production, which
itself is quantitatively determined by the labour time that society
assigns to it. Society is here conceived as an entity which employs its
collective labour power to produce the total output, while the
individual and his labour power count only as organs of that society. In
that role, the individual shares in the product to the extent that his
own labour power participates, on average, in the total labour power
(assuming the intensity and productivity of labour to be fixed). If he
works too slowly or if his work produces something useless (an otherwise
useful article would be considered useless if it constituted an excess
of goods in circulation), his labour power is scaled down to average
labour time, i.e. socially necessary labour time. The aggregate labour
time for the total product, once given, must therefore find expression
in exchange. In its simplest form, this happens when the quantitative
ratios between goods exchanged correspond to the quantitative ratios of
the socially necessary labour time expended in their production.
Commodities would in that case exchange at their values.”
― Rudolph Hiferding, Finance Capital: A study in the latest phase of capitalist development

“Commodities are the embodiment of socially necessary labour time. But
labour time as such is not expressed directly, as it is in the society
envisaged by Rodbertus, in which the central authority establishes the
unit of labour time which it will accept as valid for each commodity.
Labour time is expressed only in the exchange commensurability of two
articles. Thus the value of an article, i.e., its average time of
production, is not expressed directly as eight, ten or twelve hours, but
as a specific quantity of another article. In other words, a natural
object with all its material attributes expresses the equivalent value
of another thing. For example, in the equation, one coat equals twenty
metres of linen, the twenty metres of linen are the equivalent of one
coat simply because both are embodiments of socially necessary labour
time. It is in this sense that all commodities are commensurable.”
― Rudolph Hiferding, Finance Capital: A study in the latest phase of capitalist development

“Is it any wonder the world's gone insane, with information come to be the only real medium of exchange?" "I thought it was cigarettes.”
― Thomas Pynchon, V.

“Gasoline became a prized commodity after hurricane Ian.”
― Steven Magee

“Do you feel educated? Knowledge spreads through sharing, not through selling it. The consumeristic institutionalisation of education is essentially flawed. It takes away the process of mental growth and begets learning as a commodity rather than as a necessity for understanding. In such an academic dystopia all virtue of knowledge is lost and all that is produced is a youth who, in comparison to the society, carries more greeds, more fears, more dogmas and more illegitimate prejudices.”
― Huseyn Raza

“We are Mongna, a commodity trading company based in Indonesia, we have acquired in-depth knowledge and expertise of regional products over a period of time which has helped develop local and international customer base for the company”
― Mongna

“Mystery creates intrigue, which creates desire, which creates commodity.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“A pro sailor in understanding the wind of demand & supply can navigate the sea of commodity derivatives!”
― P. Anshu

“You sound like you're offering more than what you really are. Almost like a sugar baby or something. But we can punch this up and really package you as someone they're going to want to support. It's not about your gratitude or how nice you are or how many favors you have to offer. It's about selling yourself as someone who'll make them look good for supporting you. That's how you talk to donors. There's a whole language to it, but in the end, they just want a little prestige with their charity.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, We Weren't Looking to Be Found