The result of this cooperation is that every person makes...

The result of this cooperation is that every person makes use of the results of the efforts of other people and they procure that which they cannot obtain by themselves through trade. This indispensable need entails an essential requisite for trade and barter. Thus, each person takes on a certain aspect of the necessities of life and advances upon that path. They take what they need from the products of their own work and trade the rest to satisfy other needs.

This is the basis of barter which has been built upon a social need and has been born of the principle of social cooperation. Money, indicator of ownership A truth that must be noted here is that the goods and chattels which are products of people’s work are not of equal worth. Some are greatly needed, some are plentiful, some rare. The effort required to obtain every commodity is not the same. There are also other differences between commodities.

These differences caused complications in trade, and in order to resolve this problem, the principle of value was developed. However, evaluation of commodities requires a standard by which the value may be judged. As a result, money appeared. In other words, to evaluate the worth of items, the concept of money was devised. This was the only means by which the value of items could be determined, resolving the basic problem of trade.

To this end, various valuable and rare items, such as gold, were established as the basis for value, measuring other commodities according to this criterion. For various commodities, units of weight and volume were assigned and the units of goods were valued by the unit of money, basing trade on this standard. This is considered the mainspring for the invention of money after which various types of money were introduced such as silver, copper, bronze, notes, and so on.

These issues are discussed in detail in books on the history of economics. After the spread of buying and selling, the merchant profession appeared. That is, a group of people specialized in trade and barter to gain profit. These are activities that humans engaged in to resolve their living needs. In this manner money also became considered as a human need and was substituted for all commodities and necessities since people can gain everything—all desiderata and life pleasures—through money.

Therefore, trade and commerce was based upon the exchange of all goods for a certain type of commodity.