Das Kapital (book, Karl Marx)

PART 1: COMMODITIES AND MONEY

CHAPTER 1: COMMODITIES

Section 1: The Two Factors of a Commodity: Use-Value and Value (The Substance of Value and the Magnitude of Value)

In capitalist societies, the unit of wealth is a commodity. But what's a commodity?

A commodity is an object (something outside us) that by its properties satisfies human wants and therefore is useful. It's the usefulness of a thing that gives it value, and that usefulness is determined not abstractly but by use and consumption.

So how do we exchange things?

In order to say that, for instance, one portion of corn is equal in value to x portions of iron, we have to posit a generalized unit of value distinct from either corn or iron--a basic unit of exchange.

However, the exchange value of a thing is constantly changing with time and place. The use value of one thing often is of a different quality than the use value of another.

So how do we determine a thing's objective exchange value?

This is the work of history: "to discover the various uses of things" and also to establish "socially-recognized standards of measure for the quantities of these useful objects."

When we look at things abstracted from their use value, all we have left is the amount of human labour power that has been expended in their production, irrespective of the type of labor.

So, "t]hat which determines the magnitude of the value of any article is the amount of labour socially necessary, or the labour time socially necessary for its production."

"The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time."

"The quantity of labour.. is measured by its duration, and labour time in its turn finds its standard in weeks, days, and hours."

[Aside]

How does one determine the labor time socially necessary to produce an aesthetic object (including in this question objects that have defined functions but may also be aesthetically pleasing)?

[End of Aside]

The labour time required for the production of a thing changes with every variation in the productiveness of labour (e.g., the average amount of skill of the workmen, the state of science, and the degree of its practical application, the social organisation of production, the extent and capabilities of the means of production, and by physical conditions).

A thing can be a use value without having value: air, natural streams, etc. And a thing can be useful and the product of human labour without being a commodity: anything we make purely for ourselves or make for another without the thought of exchange.

"To become a commodity a product must be transferred to another, whom it will serve as a use value, by means of an exchange."

Section 2: The Two-fold Character of the Labour Embodied in Commodities

A commodity, such as a coat, satisfies a particular want. Its existence is the result of a special sort of productive activity, the nature of which is determined by its: Just as there are different forms of value, there are different forms of labor. Take, for instance, a coat and an amount of linen. The coat was made by a tailor, while the linen was made by a weaver. These are two different qualities of labor.
 * aim
 * mode of operation
 * subject
 * means
 * result

[Aside]

In distinguishing between qualities of labor, Marx writes: "Coats are not exchanged for coats, one use value is not exchanged for another of the same kind." To me this seems obviously incorrect. Perhaps this is a translation issue, but it would be perfectly ordinary for, for instance, one high-quality coat to be exchanged for two low-quality coats. Would Marx acknowledge this?

[End of Aside]

Coats and linen, like any commodity that is not the spontaneous product of nature, exist because people labored over them with a definite aim, an activity that appropriates particular nature-given materials to particular human wants. Labor creates use value, and so it is necessary for the existence of the human race. Without it, there can be no material exchanges between man and Nature, and so no life.

Use values like coats and linen are combinations of two elements: matter and labor.

"Skilled labour counts only as simple labour intensified, or rather, as multiplied simple labour, a given quantity of skilled being considered equal to a greater quantity of simple labour."

"For simplicity’s sake we shall henceforth account every kind of labour to be unskilled, simple labour."

"With reference to use value, the labour contained in a commodity counts only qualitatively, with reference to value it counts only quantitatively, and must first be reduced to human labour pure and simple."

So there are two types of labor just as there are two types of value: on the one hand, labor is an expenditure of human labour power; it creates and forms the value of commodities. On the other hand, labor is the expenditure of human labour power in a special form and with a definite aim, and in this, its character of concrete useful labour, it produces use values.

Section 3: The Form of Value or Exchange-Value

In order to understand money, the means by which exchange values are made concrete, we have to trace the genesis of money from its simplest, almost imperceptible outline to its contemporary "dazzling" money-form.

A. Elementary or Accidental Form Of Value

It is not possible to express the value of linen in linen. In our earlier example exchanging linen for coats, the linen expresses its value in the coat; the coat serves as the material in which that value is expressed. The value of the linen is represented as relative value. The coat officiates in equivalent form.

Whether a commodity assumes the relative form, or the opposite equivalent form, depends entirely upon its accidental position in the expression of value.

The value of the commodity linen is expressed by the bodily form of the commodity coat, the value of one by the use value of the other. Thus the linen acquires a value form different from its physical form.

Two coats may express the quantity of value of 40 yards of linen, but they can never express the quantity of their own value. In the equation of value, the equivalent figures exclusively as a simple quantity of some article, of some use value. When a commodity acts as equivalent, no quantitative determination of its value is expressed. "A close scrutiny of the expression of the value of A in terms of B, contained in the equation expressing the value relation of A to B, has shown us that, within that relation, the bodily form of A figures only as a use value, the bodily form of B only as the form or aspect of value. The opposition or contrast existing internally in each commodity between use value and value, is, therefore, made evident externally by two commodities being placed in such relation to each other, that the commodity whose value it is sought to express, figures directly as a mere use value, while the commodity in which that value is to be expressed, figures directly as mere exchange value."B. Total or Expanded Form of value

The value of a commodity A is expressed in terms of another commodity. But that other commodity may be any kind: coat, iron, corn, or anything else. Therefore, we get for one and the same commodity, different elementary expressions of value the number of which is limited only by the number of the different kinds of commodities distinct from it. A’s value is therefore convertible into a series, prolonged to any length, of the different elementary expressions of that value.

If the relative value of each commodity becomes expressed in this expanded form, we get for each of them a relative value form, different in every case, and consisting of an interminable series of expressions of value.

C. The General Form of Value

Let's consider some different ways to determine value, ordered from least practical to most: Re the universal equivalent (linen) in the third example: linen here has no relative form of value in common with other commodities, but its value is relatively expressed by a never ending series of other commodities. Thus, the expanded form of relative value (#2 in the list above) now shows itself as the specific form of relative value for the equivalent commodity in #3.
 * 1) The value of the coat is equated to linen, that of the tea to iron. But to be equated to linen, and again to iron, is to be as different as are linen and iron.
 * 2) The value of the coat is placed in contrast under all possible shapes with the bodily form of the coat; it is equated to linen, to iron, to tea, in short, to everything else, only not to itself, the coat.
 * 3) The values of the whole world of commodities is expressed in terms of a single commodity set apart for that purpose--namely, the linen.

This universal equivalent now serves as money. If in our previous examples we replace linen with gold, we get what in our current society might be called:

D. The Money-Form

So soon as gold monopolises this position in the expression of value for the world of commodities, it becomes the money commodity, and then, and not till then, does form D become distinct from form C, and the general form of value become changed into the money form.

Section 4: The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof

However varied the useful kinds of labour, or productive activities, may be, it is a physiological fact that they are functions of the human organism, and that each such function, whatever may be its nature or form, is essentially the expenditure of human brain, nerves, muscles, &c.

In all states of society, the labour time that it costs to produce the means of subsistence, must necessarily be an object of interest to mankind.

From the moment that men in any way work for one another, their labour assumes a social form.

A commodity is a mysterious thing because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour.

Since the producers do not come into social contact with each other until they exchange their products, the specific social character of each producer’s labour does not show itself except in the act of exchange.

Whenever, by an exchange, we equate as values our different products, by that very act, we also equate, as human labour, the different kinds of labour expended upon them.

The character of having value, when once impressed upon products, obtains fixity only by reason of their acting and re-acting upon each other as quantities of value.