money; which money, as in the foregoing stage, must be more in quantity than that with which he began, or his transaction will be a failure. This process differs from that of the lastmentioned stage of exchange in that the result of the transaction is always money, and not a true commodity (that is, a use-value), the latter in the long-run appearing only nominally in the transaction.
To make this clearer, we may give concrete examples of the three forms of exchange.
In the first stage, illustrated by the proceedings of the craftsman of the time of Homer, which were pretty much those of the medieval craftsman also, the village potter sold his pots, and with the money he got for them, which, possible trickery apart, represented just the value or embodied labour of the pots, he bought meal, oil, wine, flesh, etc., for his own livelihood, and consumed them.
The merchant of the later classical period shipped, say, purple cloth from 254 Sidon to Alexandria, sold his cloth there, and with