Scale of Prices, the weight quantity of metal (gold or silver) accepted in the given country as a monetary unit. The monetary unit of a definite name with its division into smaller monetary units serves for measuring and expressing the prices of all commodities. The price scale is legislatively established by the state. Money as the embodiment of social labour makes it possible to co-relate commodities through price. The necessity of measuring commodities against each other in price gave rise to the technical necessity of an invariable and common unit of measure, i. e., in the scale of prices. At a time of metal circulation (gold, silver, copper) the unit of weight measure of metal began to serve as a natural unit of measuring the price of a commodity. For instance, in Britain it is the pound sterling (a pound of silver), in ancient Rus—the “grivna” (a silver ingot weighing 204gr). But with the movement of history, many of the monetary units (pound, livre, etc.), although retaining their former name, began to contain considerably less metal because of erosion, the introduction of foreign currency, etc. Monetary units are usually broken up into smaller proportional parts: rouble—into 100 kopecks, dollar—into 100 cents. In the USSR the rouble plays the role of the scale of prices; its gold content equals to 0.987412 gr of pure gold. Under socialism the state, while planning prices and money circulation, brings its influence to bear on the real magnitude of the scale of prices expressed in money.