From Marxists Internet Archive
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Chapter Two: Exchange
It is plain that commodities cannot go to market and make exchanges of their
own account. We must, therefore, have recourse to their guardians, who are also
their owners Commodities are things, and therefore without power of resistance
against man. If they are wanting in docility he can use force; in other words,
he can take possession of them. [1] In
order that these objects may enter into relation with each other as commodities,
their guardians must place themselves in relation to one another, as persons
whose will resides in those object, and must behave in such a way that each does
not appropriate the commodity of the other, and part with his own, except by
means of an act done by mutual consent. They must therefore, mutually recognise
in each other the rights of private proprietors. This juridical relation, which
thus expresses itself in a contract, whether such contract be part of a
developed legal system or not, is a relation between two wills, and is but the
reflex of the real economic relation between the two. It is this economic
relation that determines the subject-matter comprised in each such juridical
act. [2]
The persons exist for one another merely as representatives of, and,
therefore. as owners of, commodities. In the course of our investigation we
shall find, in general, that the characters who appear on the economic stage are
but the personifications of the economic relations that exist between them.
What chiefly distinguishes a commodity from its owner is the fact, that it
looks upon every other commodity as but the form of appearance of its own value.
A born leveller and a cynic, it is always ready to exchange not only soul, but
body, with any and every other commodity, be the same more repulsive than
Maritornes herself. The owner makes up for this lack in the commodity of a sense
of the concrete, by his own five and more senses. His commodity possesses for
himself no immediate use-value. Otherwise, he would not bring it to the market.
It has use-value for others; but for himself its only direct use-value is that
of being a depository of exchange-value, and, consequently, a means of exchange.[3]
Therefore, he makes up his mind to part with it for commodities whose value in
use is of service to him. All commodities are non-use-values for their owners,
and use-values for their non-owners. Consequently, they must all change hands.
But this change of hands is what constitutes their exchange, and the latter puts
them in relation with each other as values, and realises them as values. Hence
commodities must be realised as values before they can be realised as
use-values.
On the other hand, they must show that they are use-values before they can be
realised as values. For the labour spent upon them counts effectively, only in
so far as it is spent in a form that is useful for others. Whether that labour
is useful for others, and its product consequently capable of satisfying the
wants of others, can be proved only by the act of exchange.
Every owner of a commodity wishes to part with it in exchange only for those
commodities whose use-value satisfies some want of his. Looked at in this way,
exchange is for him simply a private transaction. On the other hand, he desires
to realise the value of his commodity, to convert it into any other suitable
commodity of equal value, irrespective of whether his own commodity has or has
not any use-value for the owner of the other. From this point of view, exchange
is for him a social transaction of a general character. But one and the same set
of transactions cannot be simultaneously for all owners of commodities both
exclusively private and exclusively social and general.
Let us look at the matter a little closer. To the owner of a commodity, every
other commodity is, in regard to his own, a particular equivalent, and
consequently his own commodity is the universal equivalent for all the others.
But since this applies to every owner, there is, in fact, no commodity acting as
universal equivalent, and the relative value of commodities possesses no general
form under which they can be equated as values and have the magnitude of their
values compared. So far, therefore, they do not confront each other as
commodities, but only as products or use-values. In their difficulties our
commodity owners think like Faust: “Im Anfang war die Tat.” [“In
the beginning was the deed.” – Goethe, Faust.] They therefore
acted and transacted before they thought. Instinctively they conform to the laws
imposed by the nature of commodities. They cannot bring their commodities into
relation as values, and therefore as commodities, except by comparing them with
some one other commodity as the universal equivalent. That we saw from the
analysis of a commodity. But a particular commodity cannot become the universal
equivalent except by a social act. The social action therefore of all other
commodities, sets apart the particular commodity in which they all represent
their values. Thereby the bodily form of this commodity becomes the form of the
socially recognised universal equivalent. To be the universal equivalent,
becomes, by this social process, the specific function of the commodity thus
excluded by the rest. Thus it becomes – money. “Illi unum consilium habent
et virtutem et potestatem suam bestiae tradunt. Et ne quis possit emere aut
vendere, nisi qui habet characterem aut nomen bestiae aut numerum nominis ejus.”
[“These have one mind, and shall give their power and
strength unto the beast.” Revelations, 17:13; “And that no man might buy or
sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his
name.” Revelations, 13:17.] (Apocalypse.)
Money is a crystal formed of necessity in the course of the exchanges,
whereby different products of labour are practically equated to one another and
thus by practice converted into commodities. The historical progress and
extension of exchanges develops the contrast, latent in commodities, between
use-value and value. The necessity for giving an external expression to this
contrast for the purposes of commercial intercourse, urges on the establishment
of an independent form of value, and finds no rest until it is once for all
satisfied by the differentiation of commodities into commodities and money. At
the same rate, then, as the conversion of products into commodities is being
accomplished, so also is the conversion of one special commodity into money.[4]
The direct barter of products attains the elementary form of the relative
expression of value in one respect, but not in another. That form is x Commodity
A = y Commodity B. The form of direct barter is x use-value A = y use-value B.[5]
The articles A and B in this case are not as yet commodities, but become so only
by the act of barter. The first step made by an object of utility towards
acquiring exchange-value is when it forms a non-use-value for its owner, and
that happens when it forms a superfluous portion of some article required for
his immediate wants. Objects in themselves are external to man, and consequently
alienable by him. In order that this alienation may be reciprocal, it is only
necessary for men, by a tacit understanding, to treat each other as private
owners of those alienable objects, and by implication as independent
individuals. But such a state of reciprocal independence has no existence in a
primitive society based on property in common, whether such a society takes the
form of a patriarchal family, an ancient Indian community, or a Peruvian Inca
State. The exchange of commodities, therefore, first begins on the boundaries of
such communities, at their points of contact with other similar communities, or
with members of the latter. So soon, however, as products once become
commodities in the external relations of a community, they also, by reaction,
become so in its internal intercourse. The proportions in which they are
exchangeable are at first quite a matter of chance. What makes them exchangeable
is the mutual desire of their owners to alienate them. Meantime the need for
foreign objects of utility gradually establishes itself. The constant repetition
of exchange makes it a normal social act. In the course of time, therefore, some
portion at least of the products of labour must be produced with a special view
to exchange. From that moment the distinction becomes firmly established between
the utility of an object for the purposes of consumption, and its utility for
the purposes of exchange. Its use-value becomes distinguished from its
exchange-value. On the other hand, the quantitative proportion in which the
articles are exchangeable, becomes dependent on their production itself. Custom
stamps them as values with definite magnitudes.
In the direct barter of products, each commodity is directly a means of
exchange to its owner, and to all other persons an equivalent, but that only in
so far as it has use-value for them. At this stage, therefore, the articles
exchanged do not acquire a value-form independent of their own use-value, or of
the individual needs of the exchangers. The necessity for a value-form grows
with the increasing number and variety of the commodities exchanged. The problem
and the means of solution arise simultaneously. Commodity-owners never equate
their own commodities to those of others, and exchange them on a large scale,
without different kinds of commodities belonging to different owners being
exchangeable for, and equated as values to, one and the same special article.
Such last-mentioned article, by becoming the equivalent of various other
commodities, acquires at once, though within narrow limits, the character of a
general social equivalent. This character comes and goes with the momentary
social acts that called it into life. In turns and transiently it attaches
itself first to this and then to that commodity. But with the development of
exchange it fixes itself firmly and exclusively to particular sorts of
commodities, and becomes crystallised by assuming the money-form. The particular
kind of commodity to which it sticks is at first a matter of accident.
Nevertheless there are two circumstances whose influence is decisive. The
money-form attaches itself either to the most important articles of exchange
from outside, and these in fact are primitive and natural forms in which the
exchange-value of home products finds expression; or else it attaches itself to
the object of utility that forms, like cattle, the chief portion of indigenous
alienable wealth. Nomad races are the first to develop the money-form, because
all their worldly goods consist of moveable objects and are therefore directly
alienable; and because their mode of life, by continually bringing them into
contact with foreign communities, solicits the exchange of products. Man has
often made man himself, under the form of slaves, serve as the primitive
material of money, but has never used land for that purpose. Such an idea could
only spring up in a bourgeois society already well developed. It dates from the
last third of the 17th century, and the first attempt to put it in practice on a
national scale was made a century afterwards, during the French bourgeois
revolution.
In proportion as exchange bursts its local bonds, and the value of
commodities more and more expands into an embodiment of human labour in the
abstract, in the same proportion the character of money attaches itself to
commodities that are by Nature fitted to perform the social function of a
universal equivalent. Those commodities are the precious metals.
The truth of the proposition that, “although gold and silver are not by
Nature money, money is by Nature gold and silver,”[6]
is shown by the fitness of the physical properties of these metals for the
functions of money.[7] Up to this
point, however, we are acquainted only with one function of money, namely, to
serve as the form of manifestation of the value of commodities, or as the
material in which the magnitudes of their values are socially expressed. An
adequate form of manifestation of value, a fit embodiment of abstract,
undifferentiated, and therefore equal human labour, that material alone can be
whose every sample exhibits the same uniform qualities. On the other hand, since
the difference between the magnitudes of value is purely quantitative, the money
commodity must be susceptible of merely quantitative differences, must therefore
be divisible at will, and equally capable of being reunited. Gold and silver
possess these properties by Nature.
The use-value of the money-commodity becomes two-fold. In addition to its
special use-value as a commodity (gold, for instance, serving to stop teeth, to
form the raw material of articles of luxury, &c.), it acquires a formal
use-value, originating in its specific social function.
Since all commodities are merely particular equivalents of money, the latter
being their universal equivalent, they, with regard to the latter as the
universal commodity, play the parts of particular commodities. [8]
We have seen that the money-form is but the reflex, thrown upon one single
commodity, of the value relations between all the rest. That money is a
commodity [9] is therefore a new
discovery only for those who, when they analyse it, start from its fully
developed shape. The act of exchange gives to the commodity converted into
money, not its value, but its specific value-form. By confounding these two
distinct things some writers have been led to hold that the value of gold and
silver is imaginary. [10] The fact
that money can, in certain functions, be replaced by mere symbols of itself,
gave rise to that other mistaken notion, that it is itself a mere symbol.
Nevertheless under this error lurked a presentiment that the money-form of an
object is not an inseparable part of that object, but is simply the form under
which certain social relations manifest themselves. In this sense every
commodity is a symbol, since, in so far as it is value, it is only the material
envelope of the human labour spent upon it.[11]
But if it be declared that the social characters assumed by objects, or the
material forms assumed by the social qualities of labour under the régime of a
definite mode of production, are mere symbols, it is in the same breath also
declared that these characteristics are arbitrary fictions sanctioned by the
so-called universal consent of mankind. This suited the mode of explanation in
favour during the 18th century. Unable to account for the origin of the puzzling
forms assumed by social relations between man and man, people sought to denude
them of their strange appearance by ascribing to them a conventional origin.
It has already been remarked above that the equivalent form of a commodity
does not imply the determination of the magnitude of its value. Therefore,
although we may be aware that gold is money, and consequently directly
exchangeable for all other commodities, yet that fact by no means tells how much
10 lbs., for instance, of gold is worth. Money, like every other commodity,
cannot express the magnitude of its value except relatively in other
commodities. This value is determined by the labour-time required for its
production, and is expressed by the quantity of any other commodity that costs
the same amount of labour-time. [12]
Such quantitative determination of its relative value takes place at the source
of its production by means of barter. When it steps into circulation as money,
its value is already given. In the last decades of the 17th century it had
already been shown that money is a commodity, but this step marks only the
infancy of the analysis. The difficulty lies, not in comprehending that money is
a commodity, but in discovering how, why, and by what means a commodity becomes
money. [13]
We have already seen, from the most elementary expression of value, x
commodity A = y commodity B, that the object in which the magnitude of the value
of another object is represented, appears to have the equivalent form
independently of this relation, as a social property given to it by Nature. We
followed up this false appearance to its final establishment, which is complete
so soon as the universal equivalent form becomes identified with the bodily form
of a particular commodity, and thus crystallised into the money-form. What
appears to happen is, not that gold becomes money, in consequence of all other
commodities expressing their values in it, but, on the contrary, that all other
commodities universally express their values in gold, because it is money. The
intermediate steps of the process vanish in the result and leave no trace
behind. Commodities find their own value already completely represented, without
any initiative on their part, in another commodity existing in company with
them. These objects, gold and silver, just as they come out of the bowels of the
earth, are forthwith the direct incarnation of all human labour. Hence the magic
of money. In the form of society now under consideration, the behaviour of men
in the social process of production is purely atomic. Hence their relations to
each other in production assume a material character independent of their
control and conscious individual action. These facts manifest themselves at
first by products as a general rule taking the form of commodities. We have seen
how the progressive development of a society of commodity-producers stamps one
privileged commodity with the character of money. Hence the riddle presented by
money is but the riddle presented by commodities; only it now strikes us in its
most glaring form.
Footnotes
1.
In the 12th century, so renowned for its piety, they included amongst
commodities some very delicate things. Thus a French poet of the period
enumerates amongst the goods to be found in the market of Landit, not only
clothing shoes, leather, agricultural implements, &c., but also “femmes
folles de leur corps.”
2.
Proudhon begins by taking his ideal of Justice, of “justice éternelle,”
from the juridical relations that correspond to the production of commodities:
thereby, it may be noted, he proves, to the consolation of all good citizens,
that the production of commodities is a form of production as everlasting as
justice. Then he turns round and seeks to reform the actual production of
commodities, and the actual legal system corresponding thereto, in accordance
with this ideal. What opinion should we have of a chemist, who, instead of
studying the actual laws of the molecular changes in the composition and
decomposition of matter, and on that foundation solving definite problems,
claimed to regulate the composition and decomposition of matter by means of the
“eternal ideas,” of “naturalité” and “affinité”? Do we really know
any more about “usury,” when we say it contradicts “justice éternelle,”
équité éternelle “mutualité éternelle,” and other vérités éternelles
than the fathers of the church did when they said it was incompatible with “grâce
éternelle,” “foi éternelle,” and “la volonté éternelle de Dieu”?
3.
“For two-fold is the use of every object.... The one is peculiar to the object
as such, the other is not, as a sandal which may be worn, and is also
exchangeable. Both are uses of the sandal, for even he who exchanges the sandal
for the money or food he is in want of, makes use of the sandal as a sandal. But
not in its natural way. For it has not been made for the sake of being
exchanged.” (Aristoteles, “De Rep.” l. i. c. 9.)
4.
From this we may form an estimate of the shrewdness of the petit-bourgeois
socialism. which, while perpetuating the production of commodities, aims at
abolishing the “antagonism” between money and commodities, and consequently,
since money exists only by virtue of this antagonism, at abolishing money
itself. We might just as well try to retain Catholicism without the Pope. For
more on this point see my work, “Zur Kritik der Pol. Oekon.,” p. 61, sq.
5.
So long as, instead of two distinct use-values being exchanged, a chaotic mass
of articles are offered as the equivalent of a single article, which is often
the case with savages, even the direct barter of products is in its first
infancy.
6.
Karl Marx, l.c., p. 135. “I metalli ... naturalmente moneta.” [“The metals
... are by their nature money.”] (Galiani, “Della moneta” in Custodi’s
Collection: Parte Moderna t. iii.)
7.
For further details on this subject see in my work cited above, the chapter on
“The precious metals.”
8.
“Il danaro è la merce universale"(Verri, l.c., p. 16).
9.
“Silver and gold themselves (which we may call by the general name of bullion)
are ... commodities ... rising and falling in ... value ... Bullion, then, may
be reckoned to be of higher value where the smaller weight will purchase the
greater quantity of the product or manufacture of the countrey,” &c. (“A
Discourse of the General Notions of Money, Trade, and Exchanges, as They Stand
in Relation each to other.” By a Merchant. Lond., 1695, p. 7.) “Silver and
gold, coined or uncoined, though they are used for a measure of all other
things, are no less a commodity than wine, oil, tobacco, cloth, or stuffs.”
(“A Discourse concerning Trade, and that in particular of the East Indies,”
&c. London, 1689, p. 2.) “The stock and riches of the kingdom cannot
properly be confined to money, nor ought gold and silver to be excluded from
being merchandise.” ("The East-India Trade a Most Profitable Trade.”
London, 1677, p. 4.)
10.
“L’oro e l’argento hanno valore come metalli anteriore all’esser moneta.”
[“Gold and silver have value as metals before they are money”] (Galiani,
l.c.) Locke says, “The universal consent of mankind gave to silver, on account
of its qualities which made it suitable for money, an imaginary value.” Law,
on the other hand. “How could different nations give an imaginary value to any
single thing... or how could this imaginary value have maintained itself?” But
the following shows how little he himself understood about the matter: “Silver
was exchanged in proportion to the value in use it possessed, consequently in
proportion to its real value. By its adoption as money it received an additional
value (une valeur additionnelle).” (Jean Law: “Considérations sur le numéraire
et le commerce” in E. Daire’s Edit. of “Economistes Financiers du XVIII siècle,”
p. 470.)
11.
“L’Argent en (des denrées) est le signe.” [“Money is their (the
commodities’) symbol”] (V. de Forbonnais: “Eléments du Commerce, Nouv.
Edit. Leyde, 1766,” t. II., p. 143.) “Comme signe il est attiré par les
denrées.” [“As a symbol it is attracted by the commodities”] (l.c., p.
155.) “L’argent est un signe d’une chose et la représente.” [“Money
is a symbol of a thing and represents it’] (Montesquieu: “Esprit des
Lois,” (Oeuvres, Lond. 1767, t. II, p. 2.) “L’argent n’est pas simple
signe, car il est lui-même richesse, il ne représente pas les valeurs, il les
équivaut.” [“Money is not a mere symbol, for it is itself wealth; it does
not represent the values, it is their equivalents”] (Le Trosne, l.c., p. 910.)
“The notion of value contemplates the valuable article as a mere symbol - the
article counts not for what it is, but for what it is worth.” (Hegel, l.c., p.
100.) Lawyers started long before economists the idea that money is a mere
symbol, and that the value of the precious metals is purely imaginary. This they
did in the sycophantic service of the crowned heads, supporting the right of the
latter to debase the coinage, during the whole of the middle ages, by the
traditions of the Roman Empire and the conceptions of money to be found in the
Pandects. “Qu’aucun puisse ni doive faire doute,” [“Let no one call into
question,”] says an apt scholar of theirs Philip of Valois, in a decree of
1346, “que à nous et à notre majesté royale n’appartiennent seulement ...
le mestier, le fait, l’état, la provision et toute l’ordonnance des
monnaies, de donner tel cours, et pour tel prix comme il nous plait et bon nous
semble.” [“that the trade, the composition, the supply and the power of
issuing ordinances on the currency ... belongs exclusively to us and to our
royal majesty, to fix such a rate and at such price as it shall please us and
seem good to us”] It was a maxim of the Roman Law that the value of money was
fixed by decree of the emperor. It was expressly forbidden to treat money as a
commodity. “Pecunias vero nulli emere fas erit, nam in usu publico constitutas
oportet non esse mercem.” [“However, it shall not be lawful to anyone to to
buy money, for, as it was created for public use, it is not permissible for it
to be a commodity”] Some good work on this question has been done by G. F.
Pagnini: “Saggio sopra il giusto pregio delle cose, 1751"; Custodi
“Parte Moderna,” t. II. In the second part of his work Pagnini directs his
polemics especially against the lawyers.
12.
“If a man can bring to London an ounce of Silver out of the Earth in Peru, in
the same time that he can produce a bushel of Corn, then the one is the natural
price of the other; now, if by reason of new or more easier mines a man can
procure two ounces of silver as easily as he formerly did one, the corn will be
as cheap at ten shillings the bushel as it was before at five shillings,
caeteris paribus.” William Petty. “A Treatise of Taxes and Contributions.”
Lond., 1667, p. 32.
13.
The learned Professor Roscher, after first informing us that “the false
definitions of money may be divided into two main groups: those which make it
more, and those which make it less, than a commodity,” gives us a long and
very mixed catalogue of works on the nature of money, from which it appears that
he has not the remotest idea of the real history of the theory; and then he
moralises thus: “For the rest, it is not to be denied that most of the later
economists do not bear sufficiently in mind the peculiarities-that distinguish
money from other commodities” (it is then, after all, either more or less than
a commodity!)... “So far, the semi-mercantilist reaction of Ganilh is not
altogether without foundation.” (Wilhelm Roscher: “Die Grundlagen der
Nationaloekonomie,” 3rd Edn. 1858, pp. 207-210.) More! less! not sufficiently!
so far! not altogether! What clearness and precision of ideas and language! And
such eclectic professorial twaddle is modestly baptised by Mr. Roscher, “the
anatomico-physiological method” of Political Economy! One discovery however,
he must have credit for, namely, that money is “a pleasant commodity.”
Transcribed by Bert Shultz
Html Markup by Stephen Baird (1999)
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