And the times become ripe for the emergence of one of the
most influential abstractions of the modern age—the notion that the
relations between men as mutually interdependent producers of
commodities somehow lie at the basis of all their other social
relations. The Classical labour theory of value was closely associated
with this notion. If we regard society as consisting in essence of an
association of separate producers who live by mutually exchanging the
products of their different labours, we are likely to come to think of
the exchange of these products as being in essence the exchange /of
quantities of social labour. /And if we begin thinking in these terms,
we may well eventually conclude that the /value /of a commodity—i.e.,
its power of purchasing or commanding other commodities in exchange-is a
quality conferred upon it by virtue of the fact that a certain portion of
the labour force of society has been allocated to its production.
[Ronald L. #Meek - Studies in the #Labour Theory of #Value (1956; second edition 1973), p. 39]