“Fairness means not to use fraud and trickery in the exchange of commodities and services and the exchange of feelings.”
The Art of Loving (1956)
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Erich Fromm119
German social psychologist and psychoanalyst 1900–1980Related quotes
Eric Wolf (1923–1999) American anthropologist
Source: Europe and the People Without History, 1982, Chapter 11, The Movement of Commodities, p. 314.
Context: Where Adam Smith and David Ricardo had envisaged a growing worldwide division of labor, they had thought that each country would freely select the commodities it was most qualified to produce, and that each would exchange its optimal commodity for the optimal commodity of others. Thus in Ricardo's example, Britain would send Portugal its textiles, while Britons would consume Portuguese wines in turn. What his vision of free commodity exchange omits are the constraints that governed the selection of particular commodities, and the political and military sanctions used to ensure the continuation of quiet asymmetrical exchanges that benefited one party while diminishing the assets of another.
“Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities”
Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist
Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter V.
Context: Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life. But after the division of labour has once thoroughly taken place, it is but a very small part of these with which a man's own labour can supply him. The far greater part of them he must derive from the labour of other people, and he must be rich or poor according to the quantity of that labour which he can command, or which he can afford to purchase. The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.
Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society
Source: On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening (1938), p. 279
“Exchange, fair or unfair, always presupposes and includes the rule of the bourgeoisie.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution
Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Four, "The Export of Capital"
Fryderyk Skarbek (1792–1866) Polish noble
Fryderyk Skarbek (1828), cited in: Karl Marx. Human Requirements and Division of Labour https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/needs.htm, Manuscript, 1844.
David Ricardo (1772–1823) British political economist, broker and politician
Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter I, Section I, On Value, p. 5