#commodity

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

#commodity #entertainment #literature #stories #surrealism

Exchange, fair or unfair,always presupposes and includes the rule of the bourgeoisie. ↗

— Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

#commodity-production #communism #economics #communism

Barge traffic on the Mississippi River represents the most efficient, most cost-effective, most environmentally sound means of transporting commodity goods from this region of the country to market. ↗

— Leonard Boswell

#cost-effective #country #efficient #environmentally #goods

A century ago, petroleum - what we call oil - was just an obscure commodity; today it is almost as vital to human existence as water. ↗

— James Buchan

#almost #call #century #commodity #existence

I'm not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down. ↗

— David Byrne

#cars #commodity #down #i #i do

By the late 1980s people realized that houses did not always appreciate and that they could fluctuate like any other market commodity. ↗

— Ron Chernow

#any #appreciate #commodity #could #did

We're going to move from a commodity economy where you basically grow the same kind of crops - where a kernel of corn is a kernel of corn is a kernel of corn - to an ingredient economy where there will be a kernel of corn that will be designed for fuel, there will be a kernel of corn designed for livestock. ↗

— Tom Vilsack

#commodity #corn #crops #designed #economy

People perceive me as a commodity. They just don't think anything of asking for five minutes of my time. It never occurs to them that if they're asking for it and another thousand people are asking, I don't have 1,000 five minutes to give. ↗

— Stephen Jay Gould

#anything #asking #commodity #five #give

Value manifests itself as exchange value, as a quantitatively determined relationship, in virtue of the fact that one commodity can be exchanged for another. ↗

— Rudolf Hiferding

#commodity #determined #exchange #exchanged #fact

If you're going to play hockey now, you have to be able to play. If you have the ability to fight and play, you're an unbelievable commodity. But if you can only fight, there might be six of those guys left in the league, and I can guarantee they're going fast. ↗

— Brett Hull

#able #commodity #fast #fight #going