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well, there are two questions that spring to mind:
equal in what sense?
(the tunnel of value opens here)
democratic in what sense?
(the one opens onto questions of semantics first, register-crossing...like is democracy a procedural matter or is it a way of thinking about equality as if equality and equivalence (so legal and mathematical senses of the same basic term) were interchangable?)
but to answer:
you'd think in an abstract barter or exchange situation that the question of value would be worked out situationally. so through the interaction rather than fixed in advance or with reference to some abstract medium (money makes everything interchangable, oranges are comparable with volkswagens are comparable with anti-retroviral drugs are comparable with cans of paint)...assuming good faith on the part of the people involved with the situation, and assuming that the value of an object is being determined through the interaction, there's a way in which you could see it as democratic.
but i'd push the democratic-ness of it onto the interaction that shaped the exchange and not the exchange itself.
which is in a sense builds a response to the second question above into it.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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