From Marxists Internet Archive
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Part I: Commodities and Money
Chapter One: Commodities
Contents
Section 1 - The
Two Factors of a Commodity: Use-Value and Value
Section 2 - The
twofold Character of the Labour Embodied in Commodities
Section 3 - The
Form of Value or Exchange-Value
A. Elementary
or Accidental Form of Value
1. The
Two Poles of the Expression of Value: Relative Form and Equivalent Form
2. The
Relative Form of Value
a. The
Nature and Import of this Form
b. Quantitative
Determination of Relative Value
3. The
Equivalent Form of Value
4. The
Elementary Form of Value Considered as a Whole
B. Total
or Expanded Form of Value
1. The
Expanded Relative Form of Value
2. The
Particular Equivalent Form
3. Defects
of the Total or Expanded Form of Value
C. The
General Form of Value
1. The
Altered Character of the Form of Value
2. The
Interdependent Development of the Relative Form of Value, and of the Equivalent
Form
3. Transition
from the General Form of Value to the Money-Form
D. The
Money-Form
Section 4 - The
Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof
SECTION 1
THE TWO FACTORS OF A COMMODITY:
USE-VALUE AND VALUE
(THE SUBSTANCE OF VALUE AND THE MAGNITUDE OF VALUE)
The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production
prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,”[1]
its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with
the analysis of a commodity.
A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its
properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such
wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes
no difference.[2]
Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfies these wants,
whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of production.
Every useful thing, as iron, paper, &c., may be looked at from the two
points of view of quality and quantity. It is an assemblage of many properties,
and may therefore be of use in various ways. To discover the various uses of
things is the work of history.[3]
So also is the establishment of socially-recognized standards of measure for the
quantities of these useful objects. The diversity of these measures has its
origin partly in the diverse nature of the objects to be measured, partly in
convention.
The utility of a thing makes it a use value.[4]
But this utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical properties
of the commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity. A commodity,
such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material
thing, a use value, something useful. This property of a commodity is
independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful
qualities. When treating of use value, we always assume to be dealing with
definite quantities, such as dozens of watches, yards of linen, or tons of iron.
The use values of commodities furnish the material for a special study, that of
the commercial knowledge of commodities.[5]
Use values become a reality only by use or consumption: they also constitute the
substance of all wealth, whatever may be the social form of that wealth. In the
form of society we are about to consider, they are, in addition, the material
depositories of exchange value.
Exchange value, at first sight, presents itself as a quantitative relation,
as the proportion in which values in use of one sort are exchanged for those of
another sort,[6]
a relation constantly changing with time and place. Hence exchange value appears
to be something accidental and purely relative, and consequently an intrinsic
value, i.e., an exchange value that is inseparably connected with,
inherent in commodities, seems a contradiction in terms.[7]
Let us consider the matter a little more closely.
A given commodity, e.g., a quarter of wheat is exchanged for x
blacking, y silk, or z gold, &c. – in short, for other commodities in the
most different proportions. Instead of one exchange value, the wheat has,
therefore, a great many. But since x blacking, y silk, or z gold &c., each
represents the exchange value of one quarter of wheat, x blacking, y silk, z
gold, &c., must, as exchange values, be replaceable by each other, or equal
to each other. Therefore, first: the valid exchange values of a given commodity
express something equal; secondly, exchange value, generally, is only the mode
of expression, the phenomenal form, of something contained in it, yet
distinguishable from it.
Let us take two commodities, e.g., corn and iron. The proportions in
which they are exchangeable, whatever those proportions may be, can always be
represented by an equation in which a given quantity of corn is equated to some
quantity of iron: e.g., 1 quarter corn = x cwt. iron. What does this
equation tell us? It tells us that in two different things – in 1 quarter of
corn and x cwt. of iron, there exists in equal quantities something common to
both. The two things must therefore be equal to a third, which in itself is
neither the one nor the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchange value,
must therefore be reducible to this third.
A simple geometrical illustration will make this clear. In order to calculate
and compare the areas of rectilinear figures, we decompose them into triangles.
But the area of the triangle itself is expressed by something totally different
from its visible figure, namely, by half the product of the base multiplied by
the altitude. In the same way the exchange values of commodities must be capable
of being expressed in terms of something common to them all, of which thing they
represent a greater or less quantity.
This common “something” cannot be either a geometrical, a chemical, or
any other natural property of commodities. Such properties claim our attention
only in so far as they affect the utility of those commodities, make them use
values. But the exchange of commodities is evidently an act characterised by a
total abstraction from use value. Then one use value is just as good as another,
provided only it be present in sufficient quantity. Or, as old Barbon says,
“one sort of wares are as good as another, if the values be
equal. There is no difference or distinction in things of equal value ... An
hundred pounds’ worth of lead or iron, is of as great value as one hundred
pounds’ worth of silver or gold.”[8]
As use values, commodities are, above all, of different qualities, but as
exchange values they are merely different quantities, and consequently do not
contain an atom of use value.
If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have
only one common property left, that of being products of labour. But even the
product of labour itself has undergone a change in our hands. If we make
abstraction from its use value, we make abstraction at the same time from the
material elements and shapes that make the product a use value; we see in it no
longer a table, a house, yarn, or any other useful thing. Its existence as a
material thing is put out of sight. Neither can it any longer be regarded as the
product of the labour of the joiner, the mason, the spinner, or of any other
definite kind of productive labour. Along with the useful qualities of the
products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the
various kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labour;
there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and
the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract.
Let us now consider the residue of each of these products; it consists of the
same unsubstantial reality in each, a mere congelation of homogeneous human
labour, of labour power expended without regard to the mode of its expenditure.
All that these things now tell us is, that human labour power has been expended
in their production, that human labour is embodied in them. When looked at as
crystals of this social substance, common to them all, they are – Values.
We have seen that when commodities are exchanged, their exchange value
manifests itself as something totally independent of their use value. But if we
abstract from their use value, there remains their Value as defined above.
Therefore, the common substance that manifests itself in the exchange value of
commodities, whenever they are exchanged, is their value. The progress of our
investigation will show that exchange value is the only form in which the value
of commodities can manifest itself or be expressed. For the present, however, we
have to consider the nature of value independently of this, its form.
A use value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human
labour in the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it. How, then, is
the magnitude of this value to be measured? Plainly, by the quantity of the
value-creating substance, the labour, contained in the article. The quantity of
labour, however, is measured by its duration, and labour time in its turn finds
its standard in weeks, days, and hours.
Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the
quantity of labour spent on it, the more idle and unskilful the labourer, the
more valuable would his commodity be, because more time would be required in its
production. The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is
homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power. The total
labour power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all
commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of
human labour power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each
of these units is the same as any other, so far as it has the character of the
average labour power of society, and takes effect as such; that is, so far as it
requires for producing a commodity, no more time than is needed on an average,
no more than is socially necessary. 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
introduction of power-looms into England probably reduced by one-half the labour
required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as
a matter of fact, continued to require the same time as before; but for all
that, the product of one hour of their labour represented after the change only
half an hour’s social labour, and consequently fell to one-half its former
value.
We see then that that 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.[9]
Each individual commodity, in this connexion, is to be considered as an average
sample of its class.[10]
Commodities, therefore, in which equal quantities of labour are embodied, or
which can be produced in the same time, have the same value. The value of one
commodity is to the value of any other, as the labour time necessary for the
production of the one is to that necessary for the production of the other.
“As values, all commodities are only definite masses of congealed labour
time.”[11]
The value of a commodity would therefore remain constant, if the labour time
required for its production also remained constant. But the latter changes with
every variation in the productiveness of labour. This productiveness is
determined by various circumstances, amongst others, by 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. For example, the same
amount of labour in favourable seasons is embodied in 8 bushels of corn, and in
unfavourable, only in four. The same labour extracts from rich mines more metal
than from poor mines. Diamonds are of very rare occurrence on the earth’s
surface, and hence their discovery costs, on an average, a great deal of labour
time. Consequently much labour is represented in a small compass. Jacob doubts
whether gold has ever been paid for at its full value. This applies still more
to diamonds. According to Eschwege, the total produce of the Brazilian diamond
mines for the eighty years, ending in 1823, had not realised the price of
one-and-a-half years’ average produce of the sugar and coffee plantations of
the same country, although the diamonds cost much more labour, and therefore
represented more value. With richer mines, the same quantity of labour would
embody itself in more diamonds, and their value would fall. If we could succeed
at a small expenditure of labour, in converting carbon into diamonds, their
value might fall below that of bricks. In general, the greater the
productiveness of labour, the less is the labour time required for the
production of an article, the less is the amount of labour crystallised in that
article, and the less is its value; and vice versâ, the less the
productiveness of labour, the greater is the labour time required for the
production of an article, and the greater is its value. The value of a
commodity, therefore, varies directly as the quantity, and inversely as the
productiveness, of the labour incorporated in it. [A]
A thing can be a use value, without having value. This is the case whenever
its utility to man is not due to labour. Such are air, virgin soil, natural
meadows, &c. A thing can be useful, and the product of human labour, without
being a commodity. Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his
own labour, creates, indeed, use values, but not commodities. In order to
produce the latter, he must not only produce use values, but use values for
others, social use values. (And not only for others, without more. The mediaeval
peasant produced quit-rent-corn for his feudal lord and tithe-corn for his
parson. But neither the quit-rent-corn nor the tithe-corn became commodities by
reason of the fact that they had been produced for others. To become a commodity
a product must be transferred to another, whom it will serve as a use value, by
means of an exchange.)[12]
Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing
is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as
labour, and therefore creates no value.
SECTION 2
THE TWOFOLD CHARACTER OF
THE LABOUR EMBODIED IN COMMODITIES
At first sight a commodity presented itself to us as a complex of two things
– use value and exchange value. Later on, we saw also that labour, too,
possesses the same twofold nature; for, so far as it finds expression in value,
it does not possess the same characteristics that belong to it as a creator of
use values. I was the first to point out and to examine critically this twofold
nature of the labour contained in commodities. As this point is the pivot on
which a clear comprehension of political economy turns, we must go more into
detail.
Let us take two commodities such as a coat and 10 yards of linen, and let the
former be double the value of the latter, so that, if 10 yards of linen = W, the
coat = 2W.
The coat is a use value that satisfies a particular want. Its existence is
the result of a special sort of productive activity, the nature of which is
determined by its aim, mode of operation, subject, means, and result. The labour,
whose utility is thus represented by the value in use of its product, or which
manifests itself by making its product a use value, we call useful labour. In
this connection we consider only its useful effect.
As the coat and the linen are two qualitatively different use values, so also
are the two forms of labour that produce them, tailoring and weaving. Were these
two objects not qualitatively different, not produced respectively by labour of
different quality, they could not stand to each other in the relation of
commodities. Coats are not exchanged for coats, one use value is not exchanged
for another of the same kind.
To all the different varieties of values in use there correspond as many
different kinds of useful labour, classified according to the order, genus,
species, and variety to which they belong in the social division of labour. This
division of labour is a necessary condition for the production of commodities,
but it does not follow, conversely, that the production of commodities is a
necessary condition for the division of labour. In the primitive Indian
community there is social division of labour, without production of commodities.
Or, to take an example nearer home, in every factory the labour is divided
according to a system, but this division is not brought about by the operatives
mutually exchanging their individual products. Only such products can become
commodities with regard to each other, as result from different kinds of labour,
each kind being carried on independently and for the account of private
individuals.
To resume, then: In the use value of each commodity there is contained useful
labour, i.e., productive activity of a definite kind and exercised with
a definite aim. Use values cannot confront each other as commodities, unless the
useful labour embodied in them is qualitatively different in each of them. In a
community, the produce of which in general takes the form of commodities, i.e.,
in a community of commodity producers, this qualitative difference between the
useful forms of labour that are carried on independently by individual
producers, each on their own account, develops into a complex system, a social
division of labour.
Anyhow, whether the coat be worn by the tailor or by his customer, in either
case it operates as a use value. Nor is the relation between the coat and the
labour that produced it altered by the circumstance that tailoring may have
become a special trade, an independent branch of the social division of labour.
Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for
thousands of years, without a single man becoming a tailor. But coats and linen,
like every other element of material wealth that is not the spontaneous produce
of Nature, must invariably owe their existence to a special productive activity,
exercised with a definite aim, an activity that appropriates particular
nature-given materials to particular human wants. So far therefore as labour is
a creator of use value, is useful labour, it is a necessary condition,
independent of all forms of society, for the existence of the human race; it is
an eternal nature-imposed necessity, without which there can be no material
exchanges between man and Nature, and therefore no life.
The use values, coat, linen, &c., i.e., the bodies of
commodities, are combinations of two elements – matter and labour. If we take
away the useful labour expended upon them, a material substratum is always left,
which is furnished by Nature without the help of man. The latter can work only
as Nature does, that is by changing the form of matter.[13]
Nay more, in this work of changing the form he is constantly helped by natural
forces. We see, then, that labour is not the only source of material wealth, of
use values produced by labour. As William Petty puts it, labour is its father
and the earth its mother.
Let us now pass from the commodity considered as a use value to the value of
commodities.
By our assumption, the coat is worth twice as much as the linen. But this is
a mere quantitative difference, which for the present does not concern us. We
bear in mind, however, that if the value of the coat is double that of 10 yds of
linen, 20 yds of linen must have the same value as one coat. So far as they are
values, the coat and the linen are things of a like substance, objective
expressions of essentially identical labour. But tailoring and weaving are,
qualitatively, different kinds of labour. There are, however, states of society
in which one and the same man does tailoring and weaving alternately, in which
case these two forms of labour are mere modifications of the labour of the same
individual, and not special and fixed functions of different persons, just as
the coat which our tailor makes one day, and the trousers which he makes another
day, imply only a variation in the labour of one and the same individual.
Moreover, we see at a glance that, in our capitalist society, a given portion of
human labour is, in accordance with the varying demand, at one time supplied in
the form of tailoring, at another in the form of weaving. This change may
possibly not take place without friction, but take place it must.
Productive activity, if we leave out of sight its special form, viz., the
useful character of the labour, is nothing but the expenditure of human labour
power. Tailoring and weaving, though qualitatively different productive
activities, are each a productive expenditure of human brains, nerves, and
muscles, and in this sense are human labour. They are but two different modes of
expending human labour power. Of course, this labour power, which remains the
same under all its modifications, must have attained a certain pitch of
development before it can be expended in a multiplicity of modes. But the value
of a commodity represents human labour in the abstract, the expenditure of human
labour in general. And just as in society, a general or a banker plays a great
part, but mere man, on the other hand, a very shabby part,[14]
so here with mere human labour. It is the expenditure of simple labour power, i.e.,
of the labour power which, on an average, apart from any special development,
exists in the organism of every ordinary individual. Simple average labour, it
is true, varies in character in different countries and at different times, but
in a particular society it is given. 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. Experience shows
that this reduction is constantly being made. A commodity may be the product of
the most skilled labour, but its value, by equating it to the product of simple
unskilled labour, represents a definite quantity of the latter labour alone.[15]
The different proportions in which different sorts of labour are reduced to
unskilled labour as their standard, are established by a social process that
goes on behind the backs of the producers, and, consequently, appear to be fixed
by custom. For simplicity’s sake we shall henceforth account every kind of
labour to be unskilled, simple labour; by this we do no more than save ourselves
the trouble of making the reduction.
Just as, therefore, in viewing the coat and linen as values, we abstract from
their different use values, so it is with the labour represented by those
values: we disregard the difference between its useful forms, weaving and
tailoring. As the use values, coat and linen, are combinations of special
productive activities with cloth and yarn, while the values, coat and linen,
are, on the other hand, mere homogeneous congelations of undifferentiated labour,
so the labour embodied in these latter values does not count by virtue of its
productive relation to cloth and yarn, but only as being expenditure of human
labour power. Tailoring and weaving are necessary factors in the creation of the
use values, coat and linen, precisely because these two kinds of labour are of
different qualities; but only in so far as abstraction is made from their
special qualities, only in so far as both possess the same quality of being
human labour, do tailoring and weaving form the substance of the values of the
same articles.
Coats and linen, however, are not merely values, but values of definite
magnitude, and according to our assumption, the coat is worth twice as much as
the ten yards of linen. Whence this difference in their values? It is owing to
the fact that the linen contains only half as much labour as the coat, and
consequently, that in the production of the latter, labour power must have been
expended during twice the time necessary for the production of the former.
While, therefore, 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. In
the former case, it is a question of How and What, in the latter of How much?
How long a time? Since the magnitude of the value of a commodity represents only
the quantity of labour embodied in it, it follows that all commodities, when
taken in certain proportions, must be equal in value.
If the productive power of all the different sorts of useful labour required
for the production of a coat remains unchanged, the sum of the values of the
coats produced increases with their number. If one coat represents x days’
labour, two coats represent 2x days’ labour, and so on. But assume that the
duration of the labour necessary for the production of a coat becomes doubled or
halved. In the first case one coat is worth as much as two coats were before; in
the second case, two coats are only worth as much as one was before, although in
both cases one coat renders the same service as before, and the useful labour
embodied in it remains of the same quality. But the quantity of labour spent on
its production has altered.
An increase in the quantity of use values is an increase of material wealth.
With two coats two men can be clothed, with one coat only one man. Nevertheless,
an increased quantity of material wealth may correspond to a simultaneous fall
in the magnitude of its value. This antagonistic movement has its origin in the
twofold character of labour. Productive power has reference, of course, only to
labour of some useful concrete form, the efficacy of any special productive
activity during a given time being dependent on its productiveness. Useful
labour becomes, therefore, a more or less abundant source of products, in
proportion to the rise or fall of its productiveness. On the other hand, no
change in this productiveness affects the labour represented by value. Since
productive power is an attribute of the concrete useful forms of labour, of
course it can no longer have any bearing on that labour, so soon as we make
abstraction from those concrete useful forms. However then productive power may
vary, the same labour, exercised during equal periods of time, always yields
equal amounts of value. But it will yield, during equal periods of time,
different quantities of values in use; more, if the productive power rise,
fewer, if it fall. The same change in productive power, which increases the
fruitfulness of labour, and, in consequence, the quantity of use values produced
by that labour, will diminish the total value of this increased quantity of use
values, provided such change shorten the total labour time necessary for their
production; and vice versâ.
On the one hand all labour is, speaking physiologically, an expenditure of
human labour power, and in its character of identical abstract human labour, it
creates and forms the value of commodities. On the other hand, all labour 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.[16]
SECTION 3
THE FORM OF VALUE OR EXCHANGE VALUE
Commodities come into the world in the shape of use values, articles, or
goods, such as iron, linen, corn, &c. This is their plain, homely, bodily
form. They are, however, commodities, only because they are something twofold,
both objects of utility, and, at the same time, depositories of value. They
manifest themselves therefore as commodities, or have the form of commodities,
only in so far as they have two forms, a physical or natural form, and a value
form.
The reality of the value of commodities differs in this respect from Dame
Quickly, that we don’t know “where to have it.” The value of commodities
is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance, not an atom
of matter enters into its composition. Turn and examine a single commodity, by
itself, as we will, yet in so far as it remains an object of value, it seems
impossible to grasp it. If, however, we bear in mind that the value of
commodities has a purely social reality, and that they acquire this reality only
in so far as they are expressions or embodiments of one identical social
substance, viz., human labour, it follows as a matter of course, that value can
only manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to commodity. In fact
we started from exchange value, or the exchange relation of commodities, in
order to get at the value that lies hidden behind it. We must now return to this
form under which value first appeared to us.
Every one knows, if he knows nothing else, that commodities have a value form
common to them all, and presenting a marked contrast with the varied bodily
forms of their use values. I mean their money form. Here, however, a task is set
us, the performance of which has never yet even been attempted by bourgeois
economy, the task of tracing the genesis of this money form, of developing the
expression of value implied in the value relation of commodities, from its
simplest, almost imperceptible outline, to the dazzling money-form. By doing
this we shall, at the same time, solve the riddle presented by money.
The simplest value-relation is evidently that of one commodity to some one
other commodity of a different kind. Hence the relation between the values of
two commodities supplies us with the simplest expression of the value of a
single commodity.
A. Elementary or Accidental Form Of Value
x commodity A = y commodity B, or
x commodity A is worth y commodity B.
20 yards of linen = 1 coat, or
20 Yards of linen are worth 1 coat.
1. The two poles of the expression of value. Relative form and Equivalent
form
The whole mystery of the form of value lies hidden in this
elementary form. Its analysis, therefore, is our real difficulty.
Here two different kinds of commodities (in our example the linen and the
coat), evidently play two different parts. The linen expresses its value in the
coat; the coat serves as the material in which that value is expressed. The
former plays an active, the latter a passive, part. The value of the linen is
represented as relative value, or appears in relative form. The coat officiates
as equivalent, or appears in equivalent form.
The relative form and the equivalent form are two intimately connected,
mutually dependent and inseparable elements of the expression of value; but, at
the same time, are mutually exclusive, antagonistic extremes – i.e.,
poles of the same expression. They are allotted respectively to the two
different commodities brought into relation by that expression. It is not
possible to express the value of linen in linen. 20 yards of linen = 20 yards of
linen is no expression of value. On the contrary, such an equation merely says
that 20 yards of linen are nothing else than 20 yards of linen, a definite
quantity of the use value linen. The value of the linen can therefore be
expressed only relatively – i.e., in some other commodity. The
relative form of the value of the linen presupposes, therefore, the presence of
some other commodity – here the coat – under the form of an equivalent. On
the other hand, the commodity that figures as the equivalent cannot at the same
time assume the relative form. That second commodity is not the one whose value
is expressed. Its function is merely to serve as the material in which the value
of the first commodity is expressed.
No doubt, the expression 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, or 20 yards of linen are
worth 1 coat, implies the opposite relation. 1 coat = 20 yards of linen, or 1
coat is worth 20 yards of linen. But, in that case, I must reverse the equation,
in order to express the value of the coat relatively; and. so soon as I do that
the linen becomes the equivalent instead of the coat. A single commodity cannot,
therefore, simultaneously assume, in the same expression of value, both forms.
The very polarity of these forms makes them mutually exclusive.
Whether, then, a commodity assumes the relative form, or the opposite
equivalent form, depends entirely upon its accidental position in the expression
of value – that is, upon whether it is the commodity whose value is being
expressed or the commodity in which value is being expressed.
2. The Relative Form of value
(a.) The nature and import of this form
In order to discover how the elementary expression of the value of a
commodity lies hidden in the value relation of two commodities, we must, in the
first place, consider the latter entirely apart from its quantitative aspect.
The usual mode of procedure is generally the reverse, and in the value relation
nothing is seen but the proportion between definite quantities of two different
sorts of commodities that are considered equal to each other. It is apt to be
forgotten that the magnitudes of different things can be compared
quantitatively, only when those magnitudes are expressed in terms of the same
unit. It is only as expressions of such a unit that they are of the same
denomination, and therefore commensurable.[17]
Whether 20 yards of linen = 1 coat or = 20 coats or = x coats – that is,
whether a given quantity of linen is worth few or many coats, every such
statement implies that the linen and coats, as magnitudes of value, are
expressions of the same unit, things of the same kind. Linen = coat is the basis
of the equation.
But the two commodities whose identity of quality is thus assumed, do not
play the same part. It is only the value of the linen that is expressed. And
how? By its reference to the coat as its equivalent, as something that can be
exchanged for it. In this relation the coat is the mode of existence of value,
is value embodied, for only as such is it the same as the linen. On the other
hand, the linen’s own value comes to the front, receives independent
expression, for it is only as being value that it is comparable with the coat as
a thing of equal value, or exchangeable with the coat. To borrow an illustration
from chemistry, butyric acid is a different substance from propyl formate. Yet
both are made up of the same chemical substances, carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and
oxygen (O), and that, too, in like proportions – namely, C4H8O2.
If now we equate butyric acid to propyl formate, then, in the first place,
propyl formate would be, in this relation, merely a form of existence of C4H8O2;
and in the second place, we should be stating that butyric acid also consists of
C4H8O2. Therefore, by thus equating the two
substances, expression would be given to their chemical composition, while their
different physical forms would be neglected.
If we say that, as values, commodities are mere congelations of human labour,
we reduce them by our analysis, it is true, to the abstraction, value; but we
ascribe to this value no form apart from their bodily form. It is otherwise in
the value relation of one commodity to another. Here, the one stands forth in
its character of value by reason of its relation to the other.
By making the coat the equivalent of the linen, we equate the labour embodied
in the former to that in the latter. Now, it is true that the tailoring, which
makes the coat, is concrete labour of a different sort from the weaving which
makes the linen. But the act of equating it to the weaving, reduces the
tailoring to that which is really equal in the two kinds of labour, to their
common character of human labour. In this roundabout way, then, the fact is
expressed, that weaving also, in so far as it weaves value, has nothing to
distinguish it from tailoring, and, consequently, is abstract human labour. It
is the expression of equivalence between different sorts of commodities that
alone brings into relief the specific character of value-creating labour, and
this it does by actually reducing the different varieties of labour embodied in
the different kinds of commodities to their common quality of human labour in
the abstract.[18]
There is, however, something else required beyond the expression of the
specific character of the labour of which the value of the linen consists. Human
labour power in motion, or human labour, creates value, but is not itself value.
It becomes value only in its congealed state, when embodied in the form of some
object. In order to express the value of the linen as a congelation of human
labour, that value must be expressed as having objective existence, as being a
something materially different from the linen itself, and yet a something common
to the linen and all other commodities. The problem is already solved.
When occupying the position of equivalent in the equation of value, the coat
ranks qualitatively as the equal of the linen, as something of the same kind,
because it is value. In this position it is a thing in which we see nothing but
value, or whose palpable bodily form represents value. Yet the coat itself, the
body of the commodity, coat, is a mere use value. A coat as such no more tells
us it is value, than does the first piece of linen we take hold of. This shows
that when placed in value-relation to the linen, the coat signifies more than
when out of that relation, just as many a man strutting about in a gorgeous
uniform counts for more than when in mufti.
In the production of the coat, human labour power, in the shape of tailoring,
must have been actually expended. Human labour is therefore accumulated in it.
In this aspect the coat is a depository of value, but though worn to a thread,
it does not let this fact show through. And as equivalent of the linen in the
value equation, it exists under this aspect alone, counts therefore as embodied
value, as a body that is value. A, for instance, cannot be “your majesty” to
B, unless at the same time majesty in B’s eyes assumes the bodily form of A,
and, what is more, with every new father of the people, changes its features,
hair, and many other things besides.
Hence, in the value equation, in which the coat is the equivalent of the
linen, the coat officiates as the form 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. As a use value, the linen is something palpably
different from the coat; as value, it is the same as the coat, and now has the
appearance of a coat. Thus the linen acquires a value form different from its
physical form. The fact that it is value, is made manifest by its equality with
the coat, just as the sheep’s nature of a Christian is shown in his
resemblance to the Lamb of God.
We see, then, all that our analysis of the value of commodities has already
told us, is told us by the linen itself, so soon as it comes into communication
with another commodity, the coat. Only it betrays its thoughts in that language
with which alone it is familiar, the language of commodities. In order to tell
us that its own value is created by labour in its abstract character of human
labour, it says that the coat, in so far as it is worth as much as the linen,
and therefore is value, consists of the same labour as the linen. In order to
inform us that its sublime reality as value is not the same as its buckram body,
it says that value has the appearance of a coat, and consequently that so far as
the linen is value, it and the coat are as like as two peas. We may here remark,
that the language of commodities has, besides Hebrew, many other more or less
correct dialects. The German “Wertsein,” to be worth, for instance,
expresses in a less striking manner than the Romance verbs “valere,” “valer,”
“valoir,” that the equating of commodity B to commodity A, is commodity
A’s own mode of expressing its value. Paris vaut bien une messe. [Paris
is certainly worth a mass]
By means, therefore, of the value-relation expressed in our equation, the
bodily form of commodity B becomes the value form of commodity A, or the body of
commodity B acts as a mirror to the value of commodity A.[19]
By putting itself in relation with commodity B, as value in propriâ personâ,
as the matter of which human labour is made up, the commodity A converts the
value in use, B, into the substance in which to express its, A’s, own value.
The value of A, thus expressed in the use value of B, has taken the form of
relative value.
(b.) Quantitative determination of Relative value
Every commodity, whose value it is intended to express, is a useful object of
given quantity, as 15 bushels of corn, or 100 lbs of coffee. And a given
quantity of any commodity contains a definite quantity of human labour. The
value form must therefore not only express value generally, but also value in
definite quantity. Therefore, in the value relation of commodity A to commodity
B, of the linen to the coat, not only is the latter, as value in general, made
the equal in quality of the linen, but a definite quantity of coat (1 coat) is
made the equivalent of a definite quantity (20 yards) of linen.
The equation, 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, or 20 yards of linen are worth one
coat, implies that the same quantity of value substance (congealed labour) is
embodied in both; that the two commodities have each cost the same amount of
labour of the same quantity of labour time. But the labour time necessary for
the production of 20 yards of linen or 1 coat varies with every change in the
productiveness of weaving or tailoring. We have now to consider the influence of
such changes on the quantitative aspect of the relative expression of value.
I. Let the value of the linen vary,[20]
that of the coat remaining constant. If, say in consequence of the exhaustion of
flax-growing soil, the labour time necessary for the production of the linen be
doubled, the value of the linen will also be doubled. Instead of the equation,
20 yards of linen = 1 coat, we should have 20 yards of linen = 2 coats, since 1
coat would now contain only half the labour time embodied in 20 yards of linen.
If, on the other hand, in consequence, say, of improved looms, this labour time
be reduced by one-half, the value of the linen would fall by one-half.
Consequently, we should have 20 yards of linen = ½ coat. The relative value of
commodity A, i.e., its value expressed in commodity B, rises and falls
directly as the value of A, the value of B being supposed constant.
II. Let the value of the linen remain constant, while the value
of the coat varies. If, under these circumstances, in consequence, for instance,
of a poor crop of wool, the labour time necessary for the production of a coat
becomes doubled, we have instead of 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, 20 yards of
linen = ½ coat. If, on the other hand, the value of the coat sinks by one-half,
then 20 yards of linen = 2 coats. Hence, if the value of commodity A remain
constant, its relative value expressed in commodity B rises and falls inversely
as the value of B.
If we compare the different cases in I and II, we see that the same change of
magnitude in relative value may arise from totally opposite causes. Thus, the
equation, 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, becomes 20 yards of linen = 2 coats,
either, because the value of the linen has doubled, or because the value of the
coat has fallen by one-half; and it becomes 20 yards of linen = ½ coat, either,
because the value of the linen has fallen by one-half, or because the value of
the coat has doubled.
III. Let the quantities of labour time respectively necessary for
the production of the linen and the coat vary simultaneously in the same
direction and in the same proportion. In this case 20 yards of linen continue
equal to 1 coat, however much their values may have altered. Their change of
value is seen as soon as they are compared with a third commodity, whose value
has remained constant. If the values of all commodities rose or fell
simultaneously, and in the same proportion, their relative values would remain
unaltered. Their real change of value would appear from the diminished or
increased quantity of commodities produced in a given time.
IV. The labour time respectively necessary for the production of
the linen and the coat, and therefore the value of these commodities may
simultaneously vary in the same direction, but at unequal rates or in opposite
directions, or in other ways. The effect of all these possible different
variations, on the relative value of a commodity, may be deduced from the
results of I, II, and III.
Thus real changes in the magnitude of value are neither unequivocally nor
exhaustively reflected in their relative expression, that is, in the equation
expressing the magnitude of relative value. The relative value of a commodity
may vary, although its value remains constant. Its relative value may remain
constant, although its value varies; and finally, simultaneous variations in the
magnitude of value and in that of its relative expression by no means
necessarily correspond in amount.[21]
3. The Equivalent form of value
We have seen that commodity A (the linen), by expressing its value in the use
value of a commodity differing in kind (the coat), at the same time impresses
upon the latter a specific form of value, namely that of the equivalent. The
commodity linen manifests its quality of having a value by the fact that the
coat, without having assumed a value form different from its bodily form, is
equated to the linen. The fact that the latter therefore has a value is
expressed by saying that the coat is directly exchangeable with it. Therefore,
when we say that a commodity is in the equivalent form, we express the fact that
it is directly exchangeable with other commodities.
When one commodity, such as a coat, serves as the equivalent of another, such
as linen, and coats consequently acquire the characteristic property of being
directly exchangeable with linen, we are far from knowing in what proportion the
two are exchangeable. The value of the linen being given in magnitude, that
proportion depends on the value of the coat. Whether the coat serves as the
equivalent and the linen as relative value, or the linen as the equivalent and
the coat as relative value, the magnitude of the coat’s value is determined,
independently of its value form, by the labour time necessary for its
production. But whenever the coat assumes in the equation of value, the position
of equivalent, its value acquires no quantitative expression; on the contrary,
the commodity coat now figures only as a definite quantity of some article.
For instance, 40 yards of linen are worth – what? 2 coats. Because the
commodity coat here plays the part of equivalent, because the use-value coat, as
opposed to the linen, figures as an embodiment of value, therefore a definite
number of coats suffices to express the definite quantity of value in the linen.
Two coats may therefore express the quantity of value of 40 yards of linen, but
they can never express the quantity of their own value. A superficial
observation of this fact, namely, that in the equation of value, the equivalent
figures exclusively as a simple quantity of some article, of some use value, has
misled Bailey, as also many others, both before and after him, into seeing, in
the expression of value, merely a quantitative relation. The truth being, that
when a commodity acts as equivalent, no quantitative determination of its value
is expressed.
The first peculiarity that strikes us, in considering the form of the
equivalent, is this: use value becomes the form of manifestation, the phenomenal
form of its opposite, value.
The bodily form of the commodity becomes its value form. But, mark well, that
this quid pro quo exists in the case of any commodity B, only when some
other commodity A enters into a value relation with it, and then only within the
limits of this relation. Since no commodity can stand in the relation of
equivalent to itself, and thus turn its own bodily shape into the expression of
its own value, every commodity is compelled to choose some other commodity for
its equivalent, and to accept the use value, that is to say, the bodily shape of
that other commodity as the form of its own value.
One of the measures that we apply to commodities as material substances, as
use values, will serve to illustrate this point. A sugar-loaf being a body, is
heavy, and therefore has weight: but we can neither see nor touch this weight.
We then take various pieces of iron, whose weight has been determined
beforehand. The iron, as iron, is no more the form of manifestation of weight,
than is the sugar-loaf. Nevertheless, in order to express the sugar-loaf as so
much weight, we put it into a weight-relation with the iron. In this relation,
the iron officiates as a body representing nothing but weight. A certain
quantity of iron therefore serves as the measure of the weight of the sugar, and
represents, in relation to the sugar-loaf, weight embodied, the form of
manifestation of weight. This part is played by the iron only within this
relation, into which the sugar or any other body, whose weight has to be
determined, enters with the iron. Were they not both heavy, they could not enter
into this relation, and the one could therefore not serve as the expression of
the weight of the other. When we throw both into the scales, we see in reality,
that as weight they are both the same, and that, therefore, when taken in proper
proportions, they have the same weight. Just as the substance iron, as a measure
of weight, represents in relation to the sugar-loaf weight alone, so, in our
expression of value, the material object, coat, in relation to the linen,
represents value alone.
Here, however, the analogy ceases. The iron, in the expression of the weight
of the sugar-loaf, represents a natural property common to both bodies, namely
their weight; but the coat, in the expression of value of the linen, represents
a non-natural property of both, something purely social, namely, their value.
Since the relative form of value of a commodity – the linen, for example
– expresses the value of that commodity, as being something wholly different
from its substance and properties, as being, for instance, coat-like, we see
that this expression itself indicates that some social relation lies at the
bottom of it. With the equivalent form it is just the contrary. The very essence
of this form is that the material commodity itself – the coat – just as it
is, expresses value, and is endowed with the form of value by Nature itself. Of
course this holds good only so long as the value relation exists, in which the
coat stands in the position of equivalent to the linen.[22]
Since, however, the properties of a thing are not the result of its relations to
other things, but only manifest themselves in such relations, the coat seems to
be endowed with its equivalent form, its property of being directly
exchangeable, just as much by Nature as it is endowed with the property of being
heavy, or the capacity to keep us warm. Hence the enigmatical character of the
equivalent form which escapes the notice of the bourgeois political economist,
until this form, completely developed, confronts him in the shape of money. He
then seeks to explain away the mystical character of gold and silver, by
substituting for them less dazzling commodities, and by reciting, with ever
renewed satisfaction, the catalogue of all possible commodities which at one
time or another have played the part of equivalent. He has not the least
suspicion that the most simple expression of value, such as 20 yds of linen = 1
coat, already propounds the riddle of the equivalent form for our solution.
The body of the commodity that serves as the equivalent, figures as the
materialisation of human labour in the abstract, and is at the same time the
product of some specifically useful concrete labour. This concrete labour
becomes, therefore, the medium for expressing abstract human labour. If on the
one hand the coat ranks as nothing but the embodiment of abstract human labour,
so, on the other hand, the tailoring which is actually embodied in it, counts as
nothing but the form under which that abstract labour is realised. In the
expression of value of the linen, the utility of the tailoring consists, not in
making clothes, but in making an object, which we at once recognise to be Value,
and therefore to be a congelation of labour, but of labour indistinguishable
from that realised in the value of the linen. In order to act as such a mirror
of value, the labour of tailoring must reflect nothing besides its own abstract
quality of being human labour generally.
In tailoring, as well as in weaving, human labour power is expended. Both,
therefore, possess the general property of being human labour, and may,
therefore, in certain cases, such as in the production of value, have to be
considered under this aspect alone. There is nothing mysterious in this. But in
the expression of value there is a complete turn of the tables. For instance,
how is the fact to be expressed that weaving creates the value of the linen, not
by virtue of being weaving, as such, but by reason of its general property of
being human labour? Simply by opposing to weaving that other particular form of
concrete labour (in this instance tailoring), which produces the equivalent of
the product of weaving. Just as the coat in its bodily form became a direct
expression of value, so now does tailoring, a concrete form of labour, appear as
the direct and palpable embodiment of human labour generally.
Hence, the second peculiarity of the equivalent form is, that concrete labour
becomes the form under which its opposite, abstract human labour, manifests
itself.
But because this concrete labour, tailoring in our case, ranks as, and is
directly identified with, undifferentiated human labour, it also ranks as
identical with any other sort of labour, and therefore with that embodied in the
linen. Consequently, although, like all other commodity-producing labour, it is
the labour of private individuals, yet, at the same time, it ranks as labour
directly social in its character. This is the reason why it results in a product
directly exchangeable with other commodities. We have then a third peculiarity
of the equivalent form, namely, that the labour of private individuals takes the
form of its opposite, labour directly social in its form.
The two latter peculiarities of the equivalent form will become more
intelligible if we go back to the great thinker who was the first to analyse so
many forms, whether of thought, society, or Nature, and amongst them also the
form of value. I mean Aristotle.
In the first place, he clearly enunciates that the money form of commodities
is only the further development of the simple form of value – i.e.,
of the expression of the value of one commodity in some other commodity taken at
random; for he says:
5 beds = 1 house – (clinai
pente anti oiciaς)
is not to be distinguished from
5 beds = so much money. – (clinai
pente anti ... oson ai pente clinai)
He further sees that the value relation which gives rise to this expression
makes it necessary that the house should qualitatively be made the equal of the
bed, and that, without such an equalisation, these two clearly different things
could not be compared with each other as commensurable quantities.
“Exchange,” he says, “cannot take place without equality, and equality not
without commensurability". (out isothς
mh oushς snmmetriaς). Here, however,
he comes to a stop, and gives up the further analysis of the form of value.
“It is, however, in reality, impossible (th men oun
alhqeia adunaton), that such unlike things can be commensurable” – i.e.,
qualitatively equal. Such an equalisation can only be something foreign to their
real nature, consequently only “a makeshift for practical purposes.”
Aristotle therefore, himself, tells us what barred the way to his further
analysis; it was the absence of any concept of value. What is that equal
something, that common substance, which admits of the value of the beds being
expressed by a house? Such a thing, in truth, cannot exist, says Aristotle. And
why not? Compared with the beds, the house does represent something equal to
them, in so far as it represents what is really equal, both in the beds and the
house. And that is – human labour.
There was, however, an important fact which prevented Aristotle from seeing
that, to attribute value to commodities, is merely a mode of expressing all
labour as equal human labour, and consequently as labour of equal quality. Greek
society was founded upon slavery, and had, therefore, for its natural basis, the
inequality of men and of their labour powers. The secret of the expression of
value, namely, that all kinds of labour are equal and equivalent, because, and
so far as they are human labour in general, cannot be deciphered, until the
notion of human equality has already acquired the fixity of a popular prejudice.
This, however, is possible only in a society in which the great mass of the
produce of labour takes the form of commodities, in which, consequently, the
dominant relation between man and man, is that of owners of commodities. The
brilliancy of Aristotle’s genius is shown by this alone, that he discovered,
in the expression of the value of commodities, a relation of equality. The
peculiar conditions of the society in which he lived, alone prevented him from
discovering what, “in truth,” was at the bottom of this equality.
4. The Elementary Form of value considered as a whole
The elementary form of value of a commodity is contained in the equation,
expressing its value relation to another commodity of a different kind, or in
its exchange relation to the same. The value of commodity A, is qualitatively
expressed, by the fact that commodity B is directly exchangeable with it. Its
value is quantitatively expressed by the fact, that a definite quantity of B is
exchangeable with a definite quantity of A. In other words, the value of a
commodity obtains independent and definite expression, by taking the form of
exchange value. When, at the beginning of this chapter, we said, in common
parlance, that a commodity is both a use value and an exchange value, we were,
accurately speaking, wrong. A commodity is a use value or object of utility, and
a value. It manifests itself as this twofold thing, that it is, as soon as its
value assumes an independent form – viz., the form of exchange value. It never
assumes this form when isolated, but only when placed in a value or exchange
relation with another commodity of a different kind. When once we know this,
such a mode of expression does no harm; it simply serves as an abbreviation.
Our analysis has shown, that the form or expression of the value of a
commodity originates in the nature of value, and not that value and its
magnitude originate in the mode of their expression as exchange value. This,
however, is the delusion as well of the mercantilists and their recent revivers,
Ferrier, Ganilh,[23]
and others, as also of their antipodes, the modern bagmen of Free-trade, such as
Bastiat. The mercantilists lay special stress on the qualitative aspect of the
expression of value, and consequently on the equivalent form of commodities,
which attains its full perfection in money. The modern hawkers of Free-trade,
who must get rid of their article at any price, on the other hand, lay most
stress on the quantitative aspect of the relative form of value. For them there
consequently exists neither value, nor magnitude of value, anywhere except in
its expression by means of the exchange relation of commodities, that is, in the
daily list of prices current. Macleod, who has taken upon himself to dress up
the confused ideas of Lombard Street in the most learned finery, is a successful
cross between the superstitious mercantilists, and the enlightened Free-trade
bagmen.
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. Hence the elementary
form of value of a commodity is the elementary form in which the contrast
contained in that commodity, between use value and value, becomes apparent.
Every product of labour is, in all states of society, a use value; but it is
only at a definite historical epoch in a society’s development that such a
product becomes a commodity, viz., at the epoch when the labour spent on the
production of a useful article becomes expressed as one of the objective
qualities of that article, i.e., as its value. It therefore follows
that the elementary value form is also the primitive form under which a product
of labour appears historically as a commodity, and that the gradual
transformation of such products into commodities, proceeds pari passu
with the development of the value form.
We perceive, at first sight, the deficiencies of the elementary form of
value: it is a mere germ, which must undergo a series of metamorphoses before it
can ripen into the price form.
The expression of the value of commodity A in terms of any other commodity B,
merely distinguishes the value from the use value of A, and therefore places A
merely in a relation of exchange with a single different commodity, B; but it is
still far from expressing A’s qualitative equality, and quantitative
proportionality, to all commodities. To the elementary relative value form of a
commodity, there corresponds the single equivalent form of one other commodity.
Thus, in the relative expression of value of the linen, the coat assumes the
form of equivalent, or of being directly exchangeable, only in relation to a
single commodity, the linen.
Nevertheless, the elementary form of value passes by an easy transition into
a more complete form. It is true that by means of the elementary form, the value
of a commodity A, becomes expressed in terms of one, and only one, other
commodity. But that one may be a commodity of any kind, coat, iron, corn, or
anything else. Therefore, according as A is placed in relation with one or the
other, we get for one and the same commodity, different elementary expressions
of value.[24]
The number of such possible expressions is limited only by the number of the
different kinds of commodities distinct from it. The isolated expression of
A’s value, is therefore convertible into a series, prolonged to any length, of
the different elementary expressions of that value.
B. Total or Expanded Form of value
z Com. A = u Com. B or v Com. C or = w Com. D or =
Com. E or = &c.
(20 yards of linen = 1 coat or = 10 lbs tea or = 40 lbs. coffee or
= 1 quarter corn or = 2 ounces gold or = ½ ton iron or = &c.)
1. The Expanded Relative form of value
The value of a single commodity, the linen, for example, is now expressed in
terms of numberless other elements of the world of commodities. Every other
commodity now becomes a mirror of the linen’s value.[25]
It is thus, that for the first time, this value shows itself in its true light
as a congelation of undifferentiated human labour. For the labour that creates
it, now stands expressly revealed, as labour that ranks equally with every other
sort of human labour, no matter what its form, whether tailoring, ploughing,
mining, &c., and no matter, therefore, whether it is realised in coats,
corn, iron, or gold. The linen, by virtue of the form of its value, now stands
in a social relation, no longer with only one other kind of commodity, but with
the whole world of commodities. As a commodity, it is a citizen of that world.
At the same time, the interminable series of value equations implies, that as
regards the value of a commodity, it is a matter of indifference under what
particular form, or kind, of use value it appears.
In the first form, 20 yds of linen = 1 coat, it might, for ought that
otherwise appears, be pure accident, that these two commodities are exchangeable
in definite quantities. In the second form, on the contrary, we perceive at once
the background that determines, and is essentially different from, this
accidental appearance. The value of the linen remains unaltered in magnitude,
whether expressed in coats, coffee, or iron, or in numberless different
commodities, the property of as many different owners. The accidental relation
between two individual commodity-owners disappears. It becomes plain, that it is
not the exchange of commodities which regulates the magnitude of their value;
but, on the contrary, that it is the magnitude of their value which controls
their exchange proportions.
2. The particular Equivalent form
Each commodity, such as, coat, tea, corn, iron, &c., figures in the
expression of value of the linen, as an equivalent, and, consequently, as a
thing that is value. The bodily form of each of these commodities figures now as
a particular equivalent form, one out of many. In the same way the manifold
concrete useful kinds of labour, embodied in these different commodities, rank
now as so many different forms of the realisation, or manifestation, of
undifferentiated human labour.
3. Defects of the Total or Expanded form of value
In the first place, the relative expression of value is incomplete because
the series representing it is interminable. The chain of which each equation of
value is a link, is liable at any moment to be lengthened by each new kind of
commodity that comes into existence and furnishes the material for a fresh
expression of value. In the second place, it is a many-coloured mosaic of
disparate and independent expressions of value. And lastly, if, as must be the
case, the relative value of each commodity in turn, 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. The
defects of the expanded relative value form are reflected in the corresponding
equivalent form. Since the bodily form of each single commodity is one
particular equivalent form amongst numberless others, we have, on the whole,
nothing but fragmentary equivalent forms, each excluding the others. In the same
way, also, the special, concrete, useful kind of labour embodied in each
particular equivalent, is presented only as a particular kind of labour, and
therefore not as an exhaustive representative of human labour generally. The
latter, indeed, gains adequate manifestation in the totality of its manifold,
particular, concrete forms. But, in that case, its expression in an infinite
series is ever incomplete and deficient in unity.
The expanded relative value form is, however, nothing but the sum of the
elementary relative expressions or equations of the first kind, such as:
20 yards of linen = 1 coat
20 yards of linen = 10 lbs of tea, etc.
Each of these implies the corresponding inverted equation,
1 coat = 20 yards of linen
10 lbs of tea = 20 yards of linen, etc.
In fact, when a person exchanges his linen for many other commodities, and
thus expresses its value in a series of other commodities, it necessarily
follows, that the various owners of the latter exchange them for the linen, and
consequently express the value of their various commodities in one and the same
third commodity, the linen. If then, we reverse the series, 20 yards of linen =
1 coat or = 10 lbs of tea, etc., that is to say, if we give expression to the
converse relation already implied in the series, we get,
C. The General Form of Value
| 1 |
coat |
| 10 |
lbs of tea |
| 40 |
lbs of coffee |
| 1 |
quarter of corn |
| 2 |
ounces of gold |
| ½ |
a ton of iron |
| x |
Commodity A, etc. |
|
|
= 20 yards of linen |
1. The altered character of the form of value
All commodities now express their value (1) in an elementary form, because in
a single commodity; (2) with unity, because in one and the same commodity. This
form of value is elementary and the same for all, therefore general.
The forms A and B were fit only to express the value of a commodity as
something distinct from its use value or material form.
The first form, A, furnishes such equations as the following: –
1 coat = 20 yards of linen, 10 lbs of tea = ½ a ton of iron. 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. This form, it is plain, occurs practically only in the first beginning,
when the products of labour are converted into commodities by accidental and
occasional exchanges.
The second form, B, distinguishes, in a more adequate manner than the first,
the value of a commodity from its use value, for the value of the coat is there
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. On the other hand, any general expression of value common
to all is directly excluded; for, in the equation of value of each commodity,
all other commodities now appear only under the form of equivalents. The
expanded form of value comes into actual existence for the first time so soon as
a particular product of labour, such as cattle, is no longer exceptionally, but
habitually, exchanged for various other commodities.
The third and lastly developed form expresses the values of the whole world
of commodities in terms of a single commodity set apart for the purpose, namely,
the linen, and thus represents to us their values by means of their equality
with linen. The value of every commodity is now, by being equated to linen, not
only differentiated from its own use value, but from all other use values
generally, and is, by that very fact, expressed as that which is common to all
commodities. By this form, commodities are, for the first time, effectively
brought into relation with one another as values, or made to appear as exchange
values.
The two earlier forms either express the value of each commodity in terms of
a single commodity of a different kind, or in a series of many such commodities.
In both cases, it is, so to say, the special business of each single commodity
to find an expression for its value, and this it does without the help of the
others. These others, with respect to the former, play the passive parts of
equivalents. The general form of value, C, results from the joint action of the
whole world of commodities, and from that alone. A commodity can acquire a
general expression of its value only by all other commodities, simultaneously
with it, expressing their values in the same equivalent; and every new commodity
must follow suit. It thus becomes evident that since the existence of
commodities as values is purely social, this social existence can be expressed
by the totality of their social relations alone, and consequently that the form
of their value must be a socially recognised form.
All commodities being equated to linen now appear not only as qualitatively
equal as values generally, but also as values whose magnitudes are capable of
comparison. By expressing the magnitudes of their values in one and the same
material, the linen, those magnitudes are also compared with each other For
instance, 10 lbs of tea = 20 yards of linen, and 40 lbs of coffee = 20 yards of
linen. Therefore, 10 lbs of tea = 40 lbs of coffee. In other words, there is
contained in 1 lb of coffee only one-fourth as much substance of value –
labour – as is contained in 1 lb of tea.
The general form of relative value, embracing the whole world of commodities,
converts the single commodity that is excluded from the rest, and made to play
the part of equivalent – here the linen – into the universal equivalent. The
bodily form of the linen is now the form assumed in common by the values of all
commodities; it therefore becomes directly exchangeable with all and every of
them. The substance linen becomes the visible incarnation, the social chrysalis
state of every kind of human labour. Weaving, which is the labour of certain
private individuals producing a particular article, linen, acquires in
consequence a social character, the character of equality with all other kinds
of labour. The innumerable equations of which the general form of value is
composed, equate in turn the labour embodied in the linen to that embodied in
every other commodity, and they thus convert weaving into the general form of
manifestation of undifferentiated human labour. In this manner the labour
realised in the values of commodities is presented not only under its negative
aspect, under which abstraction is made from every concrete form and useful
property of actual work, but its own positive nature is made to reveal itself
expressly. The general value form is the reduction of all kinds of actual labour
to their common character of being human labour generally, of being the
expenditure of human labour power.
The general value form, which represents all products of labour as mere
congelations of undifferentiated human labour, shows by its very structure that
it is the social resumé of the world of commodities. That form consequently
makes it indisputably evident that in the world of commodities the character
possessed by all labour of being human labour constitutes its specific
social character.
2. The Interdependent Development of the Relative Form of Value, and of the
Equivalent Form
The degree of development of the relative form of value corresponds to that
of the equivalent form. But we must bear in mind that the development of the
latter is only the expression and result of the development of the former.
The primary or isolated relative form of value of one commodity converts some
other commodity into an isolated equivalent. The expanded form of relative
value, which is the expression of the value of one commodity in terms of all
other commodities, endows those other commodities with the character of
particular equivalents differing in kind. And lastly, a particular kind of
commodity acquires the character of universal equivalent, because all other
commodities make it the material in which they uniformly express their value.
The antagonism between the relative form of value and the equivalent form,
the two poles of the value form, is developed concurrently with that form
itself.
The first form, 20 yds of linen = one coat, already contains this antagonism,
without as yet fixing it. According as we read this equation forwards or
backwards, the parts played by the linen and the coat are different. In the one
case the relative value of the linen is expressed in the coat, in the other case
the relative value of the coat is expressed in the linen. In this first form of
value, therefore, it is difficult to grasp the polar contrast.
Form B shows that only one single commodity at a time can completely expand
its relative value, and that it acquires this expanded form only because, and in
so far as, all other commodities are, with respect to it, equivalents. Here we
cannot reverse the equation, as we can the equation 20 yds of linen = 1 coat,
without altering its general character, and converting it from the expanded form
of value into the general form of value.
Finally, the form C gives to the world of commodities a general social
relative form of value, because, and in so far as, thereby all commodities, with
the exception of one, are excluded from the equivalent form. A single commodity,
the linen, appears therefore to have acquired the character of direct
exchangeability with every other commodity because, and in so far as, this
character is denied to every other commodity.[26]
The commodity that figures as universal equivalent, is, on the other hand,
excluded from the relative value form. If the linen, or any other commodity
serving as universal equivalent, were, at the same time, to share in the
relative form of value, it would have to serve as its own equivalent. We should
then have 20 yds of linen = 20 yds of linen; this tautology expresses neither
value, nor magnitude of value. In order to express the relative value of the
universal equivalent, we must rather reverse the form C. This equivalent
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, or form B, now shows itself as the
specific form of relative value for the equivalent commodity.
3. Transition from the General form of value to the Money form
The universal equivalent form is a form of value in general. It can,
therefore, be assumed by any commodity. On the other hand, if a commodity be
found to have assumed the universal equivalent form (form C), this is
only because and in so far as it has been excluded from the rest of all other
commodities as their equivalent, and that by their own act. And from the moment
that this exclusion becomes finally restricted to one particular commodity, from
that moment only, the general form of relative value of the world of commodities
obtains real consistence and general social validity.
The particular commodity, with whose bodily form the equivalent form is thus
socially identified, now becomes the money commodity, or serves as money. It
becomes the special social function of that commodity, and consequently its
social monopoly, to play within the world of commodities the part of the
universal equivalent. Amongst the commodities which, in form B, figure as
particular equivalents of the linen, and, in form C, express in common
their relative values in linen, this foremost place has been attained by one in
particular – namely, gold. If, then, in form C we replace the linen by
gold, we get,
D. The Money-Form
| 20 |
yards of linen |
= |
| 1 |
coat |
= |
| 10 |
lbs of tea |
= |
| 40 |
lbs of coffee |
= |
| 1 |
quarter of corn |
= |
| 2 |
ounces of gold |
= |
| ½ |
a ton of iron |
= |
| x |
Commodity A |
= |
|
|
= 2 ounces of gold |
In passing from form A to form B, and from the latter to form C,
the changes are fundamental. On the other hand, there is no difference between
forms C and D, except that, in the latter, gold has assumed the
equivalent form in the place of linen. Gold is in form D, what linen was
in form C – the universal equivalent. The progress consists in this
alone, that the character of direct and universal exchangeability – in other
words, that the universal equivalent form – has now, by social custom, become
finally identified with the substance, gold.
Gold is now money with reference to all other commodities only because it was
previously, with reference to them, a simple commodity. Like all other
commodities, it was also capable of serving as an equivalent, either as simple
equivalent in isolated exchanges, or as particular equivalent by the side of
others. Gradually it began to serve, within varying limits, as universal
equivalent. So soon as it 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.
The elementary expression of the relative value of a single commodity, such
as linen, in terms of the commodity, such as gold, that plays the part of money,
is the price form of that commodity. The price form of the linen is therefore
20 yards of linen = 2 ounces of
gold, or, if 2 ounces of gold when
coined are £2, 20 yards of linen = £2.
The difficulty in forming a concept of the money form, consists in clearly
comprehending the universal equivalent form, and as a necessary corollary, the
general form of value, form C. The latter is deducible from form B,
the expanded form of value, the essential component element of which, we saw, is
form A, 20 yards of linen = 1 coat or x commodity A = y commodity B.
The simple commodity form is therefore the germ of the money form.
SECTION 4
THE FETISHISM OF COMMODITIES
AND THE SECRET THEREOF
A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily
understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing,
abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. So far as it is a
value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it, whether we consider it from
the point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying human
wants, or from the point that those properties are the product of human labour.
It is as clear as noon-day, that man, by his industry, changes the forms of the
materials furnished by Nature, in such a way as to make them useful to him. The
form of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a table out of it. Yet, for
all that, the table continues to be that common, every-day thing, wood. But, so
soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something
transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation
to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden
brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than “table-turning” ever was. [26a]
The mystical character of commodities does not originate, therefore, in their
use value. Just as little does it proceed from the nature of the determining
factors of value. For, in the first place, 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. Secondly, with regard to that which forms the ground-work for
the quantitative determination of value, namely, the duration of that
expenditure, or the quantity of labour, it is quite clear that there is a
palpable difference between its quantity and quality. 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, though not of equal interest in
different stages of development.[27]
And lastly, from the moment that men in any way work for one another, their
labour assumes a social form.
Whence, then, arises the enigmatical character of the product of labour, so
soon as it assumes the form of commodities? Clearly from this form itself. The
equality of all sorts of human labour is expressed objectively by their products
all being equally values; the measure of the expenditure of labour power by the
duration of that expenditure, takes the form of the quantity of value of the
products of labour; and finally the mutual relations of the producers, within
which the social character of their labour affirms itself, take the form of a
social relation between the products.
A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social
character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped
upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the
sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation,
existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour. This
is the reason why the products of labour become commodities, social things whose
qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses. In
the same way the light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective
excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside
the eye itself. But, in the act of seeing, there is at all events, an actual
passage of light from one thing to another, from the external object to the eye.
There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with
commodities. There, the existence of the things quâ commodities, and the
value relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities,
have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the
material relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social relation
between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation
between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse
to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the
productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life,
and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in
the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands. This I call the
Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are
produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production
of commodities.
This Fetishism of commodities has its origin, as the foregoing analysis has
already shown, in the peculiar social character of the labour that produces
them.
As a general rule, articles of utility become commodities, only because they
are products of the labour of private individuals or groups of individuals who
carry on their work independently of each other. The sum total of the labour of
all these private individuals forms the aggregate labour of society. 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. In other words, the labour of the
individual asserts itself as a part of the labour of society, only by means of
the relations which the act of exchange establishes directly between the
products, and indirectly, through them, between the producers. To the latter,
therefore, the relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of
the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but
as what they really are, material relations between persons and social relations
between things. It is only by being exchanged that the products of labour
acquire, as values, one uniform social status, distinct from their varied forms
of existence as objects of utility. This division of a product into a useful
thing and a value becomes practically important, only when exchange has acquired
such an extension that useful articles are produced for the purpose of being
exchanged, and their character as values has therefore to be taken into account,
beforehand, during production. From this moment the labour of the individual
producer acquires socially a twofold character. On the one hand, it must, as a
definite useful kind of labour, satisfy a definite social want, and thus hold
its place as part and parcel of the collective labour of all, as a branch of a
social division of labour that has sprung up spontaneously. On the other hand,
it can satisfy the manifold wants of the individual producer himself, only in so
far as the mutual exchangeability of all kinds of useful private labour is an
established social fact, and therefore the private useful labour of each
producer ranks on an equality with that of all others. The equalisation of the
most different kinds of labour can be the result only of an abstraction from
their inequalities, or of reducing them to their common denominator, viz.
expenditure of human labour power or human labour in the abstract. The twofold
social character of the labour of the individual appears to him, when reflected
in his brain, only under those forms which are impressed upon that labour in
every-day practice by the exchange of products. In this way, the character that
his own labour possesses of being socially useful takes the form of the
condition, that the product must be not only useful, but useful for others, and
the social character that his particular labour has of being the equal of all
other particular kinds of labour, takes the form that all the physically
different articles that are the products of labour. have one common quality,
viz., that of having value.
Hence, when we bring the products of our labour into relation with each other
as values, it is not because we see in these articles the material receptacles
of homogeneous human labour. Quite the contrary: 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. We are not aware
of this, nevertheless we do it.[28]
Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing what it is. It is
value, rather, that converts every product into a social hieroglyphic. Later on,
we try to decipher the hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret of our own social
products; for to stamp an object of utility as a value, is just as much a social
product as language. The recent scientific discovery, that the products of
labour, so far as they are values, are but material expressions of the human
labour spent in their production, marks, indeed, an epoch in the history of the
development of the human race, but, by no means, dissipates the mist through
which the social character of labour appears to us to be an objective character
of the products themselves. The fact, that in the particular form of production
with which we are dealing, viz., the production of commodities, the specific
social character of private labour carried on independently, consists in the
equality of every kind of that labour, by virtue of its being human labour,
which character, therefore, assumes in the product the form of value – this
fact appears to the producers, notwithstanding the discovery above referred to,
to be just as real and final, as the fact, that, after the discovery by science
of the component gases of air, the atmosphere itself remained unaltered.
What, first of all, practically concerns producers when they make an
exchange, is the question, how much of some other product they get for their
own? in what proportions the products are exchangeable? When these proportions
have, by custom, attained a certain stability, they appear to result from the
nature of the products, so that, for instance, one ton of iron and two ounces of
gold appear as naturally to be of equal value as a pound of gold and a pound of
iron in spite of their different physical and chemical qualities appear to be of
equal weight. 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. These quantities vary continually, independently of the
will, foresight and action of the producers. To them, their own social action
takes the form of the action of objects, which rule the producers instead of
being ruled by them. It requires a fully developed production of commodities
before, from accumulated experience alone, the scientific conviction springs up,
that all the different kinds of private labour, which are carried on
independently of each other, and yet as spontaneously developed branches of the
social division of labour, are continually being reduced to the quantitative
proportions in which society requires them. And why? Because, in the midst of
all the accidental and ever fluctuating exchange relations between the products,
the labour time socially necessary for their production forcibly asserts itself
like an over-riding law of Nature. The law of gravity thus asserts itself when a
house falls about our ears.[29]
The determination of the magnitude of value by labour time is therefore a
secret, hidden under the apparent fluctuations in the relative values of
commodities. Its discovery, while removing all appearance of mere accidentality
from the determination of the magnitude of the values of products, yet in no way
alters the mode in which that determination takes place.
Man’s reflections on the forms of social life, and consequently, also, his
scientific analysis of those forms, take a course directly opposite to that of
their actual historical development. He begins, post festum, with the
results of the process of development ready to hand before him. The characters
that stamp products as commodities, and whose establishment is a necessary
preliminary to the circulation of commodities, have already acquired the
stability of natural, self-understood forms of social life, before man seeks to
decipher, not their historical character, for in his eyes they are immutable,
but their meaning. Consequently it was the analysis of the prices of commodities
that alone led to the determination of the magnitude of value, and it was the
common expression of all commodities in money that alone led to the
establishment of their characters as values. It is, however, just this ultimate
money form of the world of commodities that actually conceals, instead of
disclosing, the social character of private labour, and the social relations
between the individual producers. When I state that coats or boots stand in a
relation to linen, because it is the universal incarnation of abstract human
labour, the absurdity of the statement is self-evident. Nevertheless, when the
producers of coats and boots compare those articles with linen, or, what is the
same thing, with gold or silver, as the universal equivalent, they express the
relation between their own private labour and the collective labour of society
in the same absurd form.
The categories of bourgeois economy consist of such like forms. They are
forms of thought expressing with social validity the conditions and relations of
a definite, historically determined mode of production, viz., the production of
commodities. The whole mystery of commodities, all the magic and necromancy that
surrounds the products of labour as long as they take the form of commodities,
vanishes therefore, so soon as we come to other forms of production.
Since Robinson Crusoe’s experiences are a favourite theme with political
economists,[30]
let us take a look at him on his island. Moderate though he be, yet some few
wants he has to satisfy, and must therefore do a little useful work of various
sorts, such as making tools and furniture, taming goats, fishing and hunting. Of
his prayers and the like we take no account, since they are a source of pleasure
to him, and he looks upon them as so much recreation. In spite of the variety of
his work, he knows that his labour, whatever its form, is but the activity of
one and the same Robinson, and consequently, that it consists of nothing but
different modes of human labour. Necessity itself compels him to apportion his
time accurately between his different kinds of work. Whether one kind occupies a
greater space in his general activity than another, depends on the difficulties,
greater or less as the case may be, to be overcome in attaining the useful
effect aimed at. This our friend Robinson soon learns by experience, and having
rescued a watch, ledger, and pen and ink from the wreck, commences, like a
true-born Briton, to keep a set of books. His stock-book contains a list of the
objects of utility that belong to him, of the operations necessary for their
production; and lastly, of the labour time that definite quantities of those
objects have, on an average, cost him. All the relations between Robinson and
the objects that form this wealth of his own creation, are here so simple and
clear as to be intelligible without exertion, even to Mr. Sedley Taylor. And yet
those relations contain all that is essential to the determination of value.
Let us now transport ourselves from Robinson’s island bathed in light to
the European middle ages shrouded in darkness. Here, instead of the independent
man, we find everyone dependent, serfs and lords, vassals and suzerains, laymen
and clergy. Personal dependence here characterises the social relations of
production just as much as it does the other spheres of life organised on the
basis of that production. But for the very reason that personal dependence forms
the ground-work of society, there is no necessity for labour and its products to
assume a fantastic form different from their reality. They take the shape, in
the transactions of society, of services in kind and payments in kind. Here the
particular and natural form of labour, and not, as in a society based on
production of commodities, its general abstract form is the immediate social
form of labour. Compulsory labour is just as properly measured by time, as
commodity-producing labour; but every serf knows that what he expends in the
service of his lord, is a definite quantity of his own personal labour power.
The tithe to be rendered to the priest is more matter of fact than his blessing.
No matter, then, what we may think of the parts played by the different classes
of people themselves in this society, the social relations between individuals
in the performance of their labour, appear at all events as their own mutual
personal relations, and are not disguised under the shape of social relations
between the products of labour.
For an example of labour in common or directly associated labour, we have no
occasion to go back to that spontaneously developed form which we find on the
threshold of the history of all civilised races.[31]
We have one close at hand in the patriarchal industries of a peasant family,
that produces corn, cattle, yarn, linen, and clothing for home use. These
different articles are, as regards the family, so many products of its labour,
but as between themselves, they are not commodities. The different kinds of
labour, such as tillage, cattle tending, spinning, weaving and making clothes,
which result in the various products, are in themselves, and such as they are,
direct social functions, because functions of the family, which, just as much as
a society based on the production of commodities, possesses a spontaneously
developed system of division of labour. The distribution of the work within the
family, and the regulation of the labour time of the several members, depend as
well upon differences of age and sex as upon natural conditions varying with the
seasons. The labour power of each individual, by its very nature, operates in
this case merely as a definite portion of the whole labour power of the family,
and therefore, the measure of the expenditure of individual labour power by its
duration, appears here by its very nature as a social character of their labour.
Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, a community of free
individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in
which the labour power of all the different individuals is consciously applied
as the combined labour power of the community. All the characteristics of
Robinson’s labour are here repeated, but with this difference, that they are
social, instead of individual. Everything produced by him was exclusively the
result of his own personal labour, and therefore simply an object of use for
himself. The total product of our community is a social product. One portion
serves as fresh means of production and remains social. But another portion is
consumed by the members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this portion
amongst them is consequently necessary. The mode of this distribution will vary
with the productive organisation of the community, and the degree of historical
development attained by the producers. We will assume, but merely for the sake
of a parallel with the production of commodities, that the share of each
individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour
time. Labour time would, in that case, play a double part. Its apportionment in
accordance with a definite social plan maintains the proper proportion between
the different kinds of work to be done and the various wants of the community.
On the other hand, it also serves as a measure of the portion of the common
labour borne by each individual, and of his share in the part of the total
product destined for individual consumption. The social relations of the
individual producers, with regard both to their labour and to its products, are
in this case perfectly simple and intelligible, and that with regard not only to
production but also to distribution.
The religious world is but the reflex of the real world. And for a society
based upon the production of commodities, in which the producers in general
enter into social relations with one another by treating their products as
commodities and values, whereby they reduce their individual private labour to
the standard of homogeneous human labour – for such a society, Christianity
with its cultus of abstract man, more especially in its bourgeois
developments, Protestantism, Deism, &c., is the most fitting form of
religion. In the ancient Asiatic and other ancient modes of production, we find
that the conversion of products into commodities, and therefore the conversion
of men into producers of commodities, holds a subordinate place, which, however,
increases in importance as the primitive communities approach nearer and nearer
to their dissolution. Trading nations, properly so called, exist in the ancient
world only in its interstices, like the gods of Epicurus in the Intermundia, or
like Jews in the pores of Polish society. Those ancient social organisms of
production are, as compared with bourgeois society, extremely simple and
transparent. But they are founded either on the immature development of man
individually, who has not yet severed the umbilical cord that unites him with
his fellowmen in a primitive tribal community, or upon direct relations of
subjection. They can arise and exist only when the development of the productive
power of labour has not risen beyond a low stage, and when, therefore, the
social relations within the sphere of material life, between man and man, and
between man and Nature, are correspondingly narrow. This narrowness is reflected
in the ancient worship of Nature, and in the other elements of the popular
religions. The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then
finally vanish, when the practical relations of every-day life offer to man none
but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellowmen
and to Nature.
The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material
production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as
production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in
accordance with a settled plan. This, however, demands for society a certain
material ground-work or set of conditions of existence which in their turn are
the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development.
Political Economy has indeed analysed, however incompletely,[32]
value and its magnitude, and has discovered what lies beneath these forms. But
it has never once asked the question why labour is represented by the value of
its product and labour time by the magnitude of that value.[33]
These formulæ, which bear it stamped upon them in unmistakable letters that
they belong to a state of society, in which the process of production has the
mastery over man, instead of being controlled by him, such formulæ appear to
the bourgeois intellect to be as much a self-evident necessity imposed by Nature
as productive labour itself. Hence forms of social production that preceded the
bourgeois form, are treated by the bourgeoisie in much the same way as the
Fathers of the Church treated pre-Christian religions.[34]
To what extent some economists are misled by the Fetishism inherent in
commodities, or by the objective appearance of the social characteristics of
labour, is shown, amongst other ways, by the dull and tedious quarrel over the
part played by Nature in the formation of exchange value. Since exchange value
is a definite social manner of expressing the amount of labour bestowed upon an
object, Nature has no more to do with it, than it has in fixing the course of
exchange.
The mode of production in which the product takes the form of a commodity, or
is produced directly for exchange, is the most general and most embryonic form
of bourgeois production. It therefore makes its appearance at an early date in
history, though not in the same predominating and characteristic manner as
now-a-days. Hence its Fetish character is comparatively easy to be seen through.
But when we come to more concrete forms, even this appearance of simplicity
vanishes. Whence arose the illusions of the monetary system? To it gold and
silver, when serving as money, did not represent a social relation between
producers, but were natural objects with strange social properties. And modern
economy, which looks down with such disdain on the monetary system, does not its
superstition come out as clear as noon-day, whenever it treats of capital? How
long is it since economy discarded the physiocratic illusion, that rents grow
out of the soil and not out of society?
But not to anticipate, we will content ourselves with yet another example
relating to the commodity form. Could commodities themselves speak, they would
say: Our use value may be a thing that interests men. It is no part of us as
objects. What, however, does belong to us as objects, is our value. Our natural
intercourse as commodities proves it. In the eyes of each other we are nothing
but exchange values. Now listen how those commodities speak through the mouth of
the economist.
“Value” – (i.e., exchange value) “is a
property of things, riches” – (i.e., use value) “of man. Value,
in this sense, necessarily implies exchanges, riches do not.”[35]
“Riches” (use value) “are the attribute of men, value is the attribute of
commodities. A man or a community is rich, a pearl or a diamond is
valuable...” A pearl or a diamond is valuable as a pearl or a diamond.[36]
So far no chemist has ever discovered exchange value either in a pearl or a
diamond. The economic discoverers of this chemical element, who by-the-bye lay
special claim to critical acumen, find however that the use value of objects
belongs to them independently of their material properties, while their value,
on the other hand, forms a part of them as objects. What confirms them in this
view, is the peculiar circumstance that the use value of objects is realised
without exchange, by means of a direct relation between the objects and man,
while, on the other hand, their value is realised only by exchange, that is, by
means of a social process. Who fails here to call to mind our good friend,
Dogberry, who informs neighbour Seacoal, that, “To be a well-favoured man is
the gift of fortune; but reading and writing comes by Nature.”[37]
Footnotes
1.
Karl Marx, “Zur
Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie.” Berlin, 1859, p. 3.
2.
“Desire implies want, it is the appetite of the mind, and as natural as hunger
to the body... The greatest number (of things) have their value from supplying
the wants of the mind.” Nicholas Barbon: “A
Discourse Concerning Coining the New Money Lighter. In Answer to Mr. Locke’s
Considerations, &c.”, London, 1696, pp. 2, 3.
3.
“Things have an intrinsick vertue” (this is Barbon’s special term for
value in use) “which in all places have the same vertue; as the loadstone to
attract iron” (l.c.,
p. 6). The property which the magnet possesses of attracting iron, became of
use only after by means of that property the polarity of the magnet had been
discovered.
4.
“The natural worth of anything consists in its fitness to supply the
necessities, or serve the conveniencies of human life.” (John Locke, “Some
Considerations on the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, 1691,” in
Works Edit. Lond., 1777, Vol. II., p. 28.) In English writers of the 17th
century we frequently find “worth” in the sense of value in use, and
“value” in the sense of exchange value. This is quite in accordance with the
spirit of a language that likes to use a Teutonic word for the actual thing, and
a Romance word for its reflexion.
5.
In bourgeois societies the economic fictio juris prevails, that every
one, as a buyer, possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of commodities.
6.
“La valeur consiste dans le rapport d’échange qui se trouve entre telle
chose et telle autre entre telle mesure d’une production et telle mesure
d’une autre.” [“Value consists in the exchange relation between one thing
and another, between a given amount of one product and a given amount of
another”] (Le Trosne: “De l’Intérêt Social.” Physiocrates,
Ed. Daire. Paris, 1846. p. 889.)
7.
“Nothing can have an intrinsick value.” (N.
Barbon, t. c., p. 6); or as Butler says – “The value of a thing is just
as much as it will bring.”
8.
N. Barbon, l.c.,
p. 53 and 7.
9.
“The value of them (the necessaries of life), when they are exchanged the one
for another, is regulated by the quantity of labour necessarily required, and
commonly taken in producing them.” (“Some Thoughts on the Interest of Money
in General, and Particularly in the Publick Funds, &.” Lond., p. 36) This
remarkable anonymous work written in the last century, bears no date. It is
clear, however, from internal evidence that it appeared in the reign of George
II, about 1739 or 1740.
10.
“Toutes les productions d’un même genre ne forment proprement qu’une
masse, dont le prix se détermine en général et sans égard aux circonstances
particulières.” [“Properly speaking, all products of the same kind form a
single mass, and their price is determined in general and without regard to
particular circumstances”] (Le Trosne, l.c., p. 893.)
11.
K.
Marx. l.c., p.6.
A.
The following passage occurred only in the first edition.
Now we know the substance
of value. It is labour. We know the measure of its magnitude. It
is labour time. The form, which stampes value as exchange-value,
remains to be analysed. But before this we need to develop the characteristics
we have already found somewhat more fully.
Taken from the Penguin edition of Capital,
translated by Ben Fowkes.
12.
I am inserting the parenthesis because its omission has often given rise to the
misunderstanding that every product that is consumed by some one other than its
producer is considered in Marx a commodity. [Engels, 4th German Edition]
13.
Tutti i fenomeni dell’universo, sieno essi prodotti della mano dell’uomo,
ovvero delle universali leggi della fisica, non ci danno idea di attuale
creazione, ma unicamente di una modificazione della materia. Accostare e
separare sono gli unici elementi che l’ingegno umano ritrova analizzando
l’idea della riproduzione: e tanto e riproduzione di valore (value in use,
although Verri in this passage of his controversy with the Physiocrats is not
himself quite certain of the kind of value he is speaking of) e di ricchezze se
la terra, l’aria e l’acqua ne’ campi si trasmutino in grano, come se colla
mano dell’uomo il glutine di un insetto si trasmuti in velluto ovvero alcuni
pezzetti di metalio si organizzino a formare una ripetizione.” [“All the
phenomena of the universe, whether produced by the hand of man or through the
universal laws of physics, are not actual new creations, but merely a
modification of matter. Joining together and separating are the only elements
which the human mind always finds on analysing the concept of reproduction.’
and it is just the same with the reproduction of value” (value in use,
although Verri in this passage of his controversy with the Physiocrats is not
himself quite certain of the kind of value he is speaking of) “and of wealth,
when earth, air and water in the fields are transformed into corn, or when the
hand of man transforms the secretions of an insect into silk, or some pieces of
metal are arranged to make the mechanism of a watch.”] – Pietro Verri,
“Meditazioni sulla Economia Politica” [first printed in 1773] in Custodi’s
edition of the Italian Economists, Parte Moderna, t. XV., p. 22.
14.
Comp. Hegel, “Philosophie
des Rechts.” Berlin, 1840. p. 250.
15.
The reader must note that we are not speaking here of the wages or value that
the labourer gets for a given labour time, but of the value of the commodity in
which that labour time is materialised. Wages is a category that, as yet, has no
existence at the present stage of our investigation.
16.
In order to prove that labour alone is that all-sufficient and real measure, by
which at all times the value of all commodities can be estimated and compared,
Adam Smith says, “Equal quantities of labour must at all times and in all
places have the same value for the labourer. In his normal state of health,
strength, and activity, and with the average degree of skill that he may
possess, he must always give up the same portion of his rest his freedom, and
his happiness.” (“Wealth
of Nations,” b. I. ch. V.) On the one hand Adam Smith here (but not
everywhere) confuses the determination of value by means of the quantity of
labour expended in the production of commodities, with the determination of the
values of commodities by means of the value of labour, and seeks in consequence
to prove that equal quantities of labour have always the same value. On the
other hand he has a presentiment, that labour, so far as it manifests itself in
the value of commodities, counts only as expenditure of labour power, but he
treats this expenditure as the mere sacrifice of rest, freedom, and happiness,
not as at the same time the normal activity of living beings. But then, he has
the modern wage-labourer in his eye. Much more aptly, the anonymous predecessor
of Adam Smith, quoted above in Note 1, p. 39 [note 9 etext]. says “one man has
employed himself a week in providing this necessary of life ... and he that
gives him some other in exchange cannot make a better estimate of what is a
proper equivalent, than by computing what cost him just as much labour and time
which in effect is no more than exchanging one man’s labour in one thing for a
time certain, for another man’s labour in another thing for the same time.”
(l.c., p. 39.) [The English language has the advantage of possessing different
words for the two aspects of labour here considered. The labour which creates
use value, and counts qualitatively, is Work, as distinguished from Labour, that
which creates Value and counts quantitatively, is Labour as distinguished from
Work - Engels]
17.
The few economists, amongst whom is S. Bailey, who have occupied themselves with
the analysis of the form of value, have been unable to arrive at any result,
first, because they confuse the form of value with value itself; and second,
because, under the coarse influence of the practical bourgeois, they exclusively
give their attention to the quantitative aspect of the question. “The command
of quantity ... constitutes value.” (“Money and its Vicissitudes.” London,
1837, p. 11. By S. Bailey.)
18.
The celebrated Franklin, one of the first economists, after Wm. Petty, who saw
through the nature of value, says: “Trade in general being nothing else but
the exchange of labour for labour, the value of all things is ... most justly
measured by labour.” (“The works of B. Franklin, &c.,” edited by
Sparks. Boston, 1836, Vol. II., p. 267.) Franklin is unconscious that by
estimating the value of everything in labour, he makes abstraction from any
difference in the sorts of labour exchanged, and thus reduces them all to equal
human labour. But although ignorant of this, yet he says it. He speaks first of
“the one labour,” then of “the other labour,” and finally of “labour,”
without further qualification, as the substance of the value of everything.
19.
In a sort of way, it is with man as with commodities. Since he comes into the
world neither with a looking glass in his hand, nor as a Fichtian
philosopher, to whom “I am I” is sufficient, man first sees and recognises
himself in other men. Peter only establishes his own identity as a man by first
comparing himself with Paul as being of like kind. And thereby Paul, just as he
stands in his Pauline personality, becomes to Peter the type of the genus
homo.
20.
Value is here, as occasionally in the preceding pages, used in sense of value
determined as to quantity, or of magnitude of value.
21.
This incongruity between the magnitude of value and its relative expression has,
with customary ingenuity, been exploited by vulgar economists. For example –
“Once admit that A falls, because B, with which it is exchanged, rises, while
no less labour is bestowed in the meantime on A, and your general principle of
value falls to the ground... If he [Ricardo] allowed that when A rises in value
relatively to B, B falls in value relatively to A, he cut away the ground on
which he rested his grand proposition, that the value of a commodity is ever
determined by the labour embodied in it, for if a change in the cost of A alters
not only its own value in relation to B, for which it is exchanged, but also the
value of B relatively to that of A, though no change has taken place in the
quantity of labour to produce B, then not only the doctrine falls to the ground
which asserts that the quantity of labour bestowed on an article regulates its
value, but also that which affirms the cost of an article to regulate its
value’ (J. Broadhurst: “Political Economy,” London, 1842, pp. 11 and 14.)
Mr. Broadhurst might just as well say: consider the fractions 10/20, 10/50,
10/100, &c., the number 10 remains unchanged, and yet its proportional
magnitude, its magnitude relatively to the numbers 20, 50, 100 &c.,
continually diminishes. Therefore the great principle that the magnitude of a
whole number, such as 10, is “regulated” by the number of times unity is
contained in it, falls to the ground. [The author explains in section 4 of this
chapter, pp. 80-81, note 2 (note 33 etext), what he understands by “Vulgar
Economy.” – Engels]
22.
Such expressions of relations in general, called
by Hegel reflex categories, form a very curious class. For instance, one man
is king only because other men stand in the relation of subjects to him. They,
on the contrary, imagine that they are subjects because he is king.
23.
F. L. A. Ferrier, sous-inspecteur des douanes, “Du gouvernement considéré
dans ses rapports avec le commerce,” Paris, 1805; and Charles Ganilh, “Des
Systèmes d’Economie Politique, – 2nd ed., Paris, 1821.
24.
In Homer, for instance, the value of an article is expressed in a series of
different things II. Vll. 472-475.
25.
For this reason, we can speak of the coat value of the linen when its value is
expressed in coats, or of its corn value when expressed in corn, and so on.
Every such expression tells us, that what appears in the use values, cost, corn,
&c., is the value of the linen. “The value of any commodity denoting its
relation in exchange, we may speak of it as ... corn value, cloth value,
according to the commodity with which it is compared; and hence there are a
thousand different kinds of value, as many kinds of value as there are
commodities in existence, and all are equally real and equally nominal.” (“A
Critical Dissertation on the Nature, Measures and Causes of Value: chiefly in
reference to the writings of Mr. Ricardo and his followers.” By the author of
“Essays on the Formation, &c., of Opinions.” London, 1825, p. 39.) S.
Bailey, the author of this anonymous work, a work which in its day created much
stir in England, fancied that, by thus pointing out the various relative
expressions of one and the same value, he had proved the impossibility of any
determination of the concept of value. However narrow his own views may have
been, yet, that he laid his finger on some serious defects in the Ricardian
Theory, is proved by the animosity with which he was attacked by Ricardo’s
followers. See the Westminster Review for example.
26.
It is by no means self-evident that this character of direct and universal
exchangeability is, so to speak, a polar one, and as intimately connected with
its opposite pole, the absence of direct exchangeability, as the positive pole
of the magnet is with its negative counterpart. It may therefore be imagined
that all commodities can simultaneously have this character impressed upon them,
just as it can be imagined that all Catholics can be popes together. It is, of
course, highly desirable in the eyes of the petit bourgeois, for whom the
production of commodities is the nec plus ultra of human freedom and
individual independence, that the inconveniences resulting from this character
of commodities not being directly exchangeable, should be removed. Proudhon’s
socialism is a working out of this Philistine Utopia, a form of socialism which,
as I have elsewhere shown, does not possess even the merit of originality. Long
before his time, the task was attempted with much better success by Gray, Bray,
and others. But, for all that, wisdom of this kind flourishes even now in
certain circles under the name of “science.” Never has any school played
more tricks with the word science, than that of Proudhon, for “wo Begriffe
fehlen, Da stellt zur rechten Zeit ein Wort sich ein.” [“Where thoughts are
absent, Words are brought in as convenient replacements,” Goethe’s, Faust,
See Proudhon’s Philosophy
of Poverty]
26a.
In the German edition, there is the following footnote here: “One may recall
that China and the tables began to dance when the rest of the world appeared to
be standing still – pour encourager les autres [to
encourage the others].” The deafeat of the 1848-49 revolutions was
followed by a period of dismal political reaction in Europe. At that time,
spiritualism, especially table-turning, became the rage among the European
aristocracy. In 1850-64, China was swept by an anti-feudal liberation movement
in the form of a large-scale peasant war, the Taiping Revolt. – Note by
editors of MECW.
27.
Among the ancient Germans the unit for measuring land was what could be
harvested in a day, and was called Tagwerk, Tagwanne (jurnale, or terra jurnalis,
or diornalis), Mannsmaad, &c. (See G. L. von Maurer, “Einleitung zur
Geschichte der Mark, &c. Verfassung,” Munchen, 1854, p. 129 sq.)
28.
When, therefore, Galiani says: Value is a relation between persons – “La
Ricchezza e una ragione tra due persone,” – he ought to have added: a
relation between persons expressed as a relation between things. (Galiani: Della
Moneta, p. 221, V. III. of Custodi’s collection of “Scrittori Classici
Italiani di Economia Politica.” Parte Moderna, Milano 1803.)
29.
What are we to think of a law that asserts itself only by periodical
revolutions? It is just nothing but a law of Nature, founded on the want of
knowledge of those whose action is the subject of it.” (Friedrich Engels:
“Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationalökonomie,” in the “Deutsch-Französische
Jahrbücher,” edited by Arnold Ruge and Karl Marx. Paris. 1844.)
30.
Even Ricardo has his stories à la Robinson. “He makes the primitive
hunter and the primitive fisher straightway, as owners of commodities, exchange
fish and game in the proportion in which labour time is incorporated in these
exchange values. On this occasion he commits the anachronism of making these men
apply to the calculation, so far as their implements have to be taken into
account, the annuity tables in current use on the London Exchange in the year
1817. The parallelograms of Mr. Owen appear to be the only form of society,
besides the bourgeois form, with which he was acquainted.” (Karl Marx: “Zur
Kritik, &c..” pp. 38, 39)
31.
“A ridiculous presumption has latterly got abroad that common property in its
primitive form is specifically a Slavonian, or even exclusively Russian form. It
is the primitive form that we can prove to have existed amongst Romans, Teutons,
and Celts, and even to this day we find numerous examples, ruins though they be,
in India. A more exhaustive study of Asiatic, and especially of Indian forms of
common property, would show how from the different forms of primitive common
property, different forms of its dissolution have been developed. Thus, for
instance, the various original types of Roman and Teutonic private property are
deducible from different forms of Indian common property.” (Karl Marx, “Zur
Kritik, &c.,” p. 10.)
32.
The insufficiency of Ricardo’s analysis of the magnitude of value, and his
analysis is by far the best, will appear from the 3rd and 4th books of this
work. As regards value in general, it is the weak point of the classical school
of Political Economy that it nowhere expressly and with full consciousness,
distinguishes between labour, as it appears in the value of a product, and the
same labour, as it appears in the use value of that product. Of course the
distinction is practically made, since this school treats labour, at one time
under its quantitative aspect, at another under its qualitative aspect. But it
has not the least idea, that when the difference between various kinds of labour
is treated as purely quantitative, their qualitative unity or equality, and
therefore their reduction to abstract human labour, is implied. For instance,
Ricardo declares that he agrees with Destutt de Tracy in this proposition: “As
it is certain that our physical and moral faculties are alone our original
riches, the employment of those faculties, labour of some kind, is our only
original treasure, and it is always from this employment that all those things
are created which we call riches... It is certain, too, that all those things
only represent the labour which has created them, and if they have a value, or
even two distinct values, they can only derive them from that (the value) of the
labour from which they emanate.” (Ricardo, “The
Principles of Pol. Econ.,” 3 Ed. Lond. 1821, p. 334.) We would here only
point out, that Ricardo puts his own more profound interpretation upon the words
of Destutt. What the latter really says is, that on the one hand all things
which constitute wealth represent the labour that creates them, but that on the
other hand, they acquire their “two different values” (use value and
exchange value) from “the value of labour.” He thus falls into the
commonplace error of the vulgar economists, who assume the value of one
commodity (in this case labour) in order to determine the values of the rest.
But Ricardo reads him as if he had said, that labour (not the value of labour)
is embodied both in use value and exchange value. Nevertheless, Ricardo himself
pays so little attention to the twofold character of the labour which has a
twofold embodiment, that he devotes the whole of his chapter on “Value and
Riches, Their Distinctive Properties,” to a laborious examination of the
trivialities of a J.B. Say. And at the finish he is quite astonished to find
that Destutt on the one hand agrees with him as to labour being the source of
value, and on the other hand with J. B. Say as to the notion of value.
33.
It is one of the chief failings of classical economy that it has never
succeeded, by means of its analysis of commodities, and, in particular, of their
value, in discovering that form under which value becomes exchange value. Even Adam
Smith and Ricardo,
the best representatives of the school, treat the form of value as a thing of no
importance, as having no connection with the inherent nature of commodities. The
reason for this is not solely because their attention is entirely absorbed in
the analysis of the magnitude of value. It lies deeper. The value form of the
product of labour is not only the most abstract, but is also the most universal
form, taken by the product in bourgeois production and stamps that production as
a particular species of social production, and thereby gives it its special
historical character. If then we treat this mode of production as one eternally
fixed by Nature for every state of society, we necessarily overlook that which
is the differentia specifica of the value form, and consequently of the
commodity form, and of its further developments, money orm, capital form,
&c. We consequently find that economists, who are thoroughly agreed as to
labour time being the measure of the magnitude of value, have the most strange
and contradictory ideas of money, the perfected form of the general equivalent.
This is seen in a striking manner when they treat of banking, where the
commonplace definitions of money will no longer hold water. This led to the rise
of a restored mercantile system (Ganilh, &c.), which sees in value nothing
but a social form, or rather the unsubstantial ghost of that form. Once for all
I may here state, that by classical Political Economy, I understand that economy
which, since the time of W.
Petty, has investigated the real relations of production in bourgeois
society in contradistinction to vulgar economy, which deals with appearances
only, ruminates without ceasing on the materials long since provided by
scientific economy, and there seeks plausible explanations of the most obtrusive
phenomena, for bourgeois daily use, but for the rest, confines itself to
systematising in a pedantic way, and proclaiming for everlasting truths, the
trite ideas held by the self-complacent bourgeoisie with regard to their own
world, to them the best of all possible worlds.
34.
“Les économistes ont une singulière manière de procéder. Il n’y a pour
eux que deux sortes d’institutions, celles de l’art et celles de la nature.
Les institutions de la féodalité sont des institutions artificielles celles de
la bourgeoisie sont des institutions naturelles. Ils ressemblent en ceci aux théologiens,
qui eux aussi établissent deux sortes de religions. Toute religion qui n’est
pas la leur, est une invention des hommes tandis que leur propre religion est
une émanation de Dieu -Ainsi il y a eu de l’histoire, mais il n’y en a
plus.” [“Economists have a singular method of procedure. There are only two
kinds of institutions for them, artificial and natural. The institutions of
feudalism are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural
institutions. In this they resemble the theologians, who likewise establish two
kinds of religion. Every religion which is not theirs is an invention of men,
while their own is an emanation from God. ... Thus there has been history, but
there is no longer any”] (Karl Marx. Misère
de la Philosophie. Réponse a la Philosophie de la Misère par M. Proudhon,
1847, p. 113.) Truly comical is M. Bastiat, who imagines that the ancient Greeks
and Romans lived by plunder alone. But when people plunder for centuries, there
must always be something at hand for them to seize; the objects of plunder must
be continually reproduced. It would thus appear that even Greeks and Romans had
some process of production, consequently, an economy, which just as much
constituted the material basis of their world, as bourgeois economy constitutes
that of our modern world. Or perhaps Bastiat means, that a mode of production
based on slavery is based on a system of plunder. In that case he treads on
dangerous ground. If a giant thinker like Aristotle erred in his appreciation of
slave labour, why should a dwarf economist like Bastiat be right in his
appreciation of wage labour? I seize this opportunity of shortly answering an
objection taken by a German paper in America, to my work, “Zur Kritik der Pol.
Oekonomie, 1859.” In the estimation of that paper, my view that each special
mode of production and the social relations corresponding to it, in short, that
the economic structure of society, is the real basis on which the juridical and
political superstructure is raised and to which definite social forms of thought
correspond; that the mode of production determines the character of the social,
political, and intellectual life generally, all this is very true for our own
times, in which material interests preponderate, but not for the middle ages, in
which Catholicism, nor for Athens and Rome, where politics, reigned supreme. In
the first place it strikes one as an odd thing for any one to suppose that these
well-worn phrases about the middle ages and the ancient world are unknown to
anyone else. This much, however, is clear, that the middle ages could not live
on Catholicism, nor the ancient world on politics. On the contrary, it is the
mode in which they gained a livelihood that explains why here politics, and
there Catholicism, played the chief part. For the rest, it requires but a slight
acquaintance with the history of the Roman republic, for example, to be aware
that its secret history is the history of its landed property. On the other
hand, Don Quixote long ago paid the penalty for wrongly imagining that knight
errantry was compatible with all economic forms of society.
35.
“Observations on certain verbal disputes in Pol. Econ., particularly relating
to value and to demand and supply” Lond., 1821, p. 16.
36.
S. Bailey, l.c., p. 165.
37.
The author of “Observations” and S. Bailey accuse Ricardo of converting
exchange value from something relative into something absolute. The opposite is
the fact. He has explained the apparent relation between objects, such as
diamonds and pearls, in which relation they appear as exchange values, and
disclosed the true relation hidden behind the appearances, namely, their
relation to each other as mere expressions of human labour. If the followers of
Ricardo answer Bailey somewhat rudely, and by no means convincingly, the reason
is to be sought in this, that they were unable to find in Ricardo’s own works
any key to the hidden relations existing between value and its form, exchange
value.
Transcribed by Bert Schultz (1993)
Html Markup by Brian Baggins & Andy Blunden (1999)
Proofed and Corrected by Andy Blunden (2005)
|
