First Book: The Production Process of Capital

Chapter One: Commodity and Money

§ 1 The Commodity

The wealth of societies in which the capitalistic mode of production prevails appears as an "immense collection of commodities",[^e1] the single commodity as its elementary form. Our investigation therefore begins with the analysis of the commodity.

The commodity is, first of all, an outward object (Gegenstand), a thing (Ding) that, through its properties, meets human needs of some type. The nature of these needs - whether they spring from the stomach or the imagination, for example - alters nothing in the thing_ ((Sache).[^e2] Nor is it a question here, how the thing_ meets the human need - whether immediately as means of life, i.e. as an object of consumption (Genusses), or by indirection, as means of production.

Any useful thing - iron, paper, etc. - must be viewed under a double aspect: according to its quality and quantity. Each such thing is a whole of many properties and may thus prove useful in different respects. To discover these different respects and thus the manifold modes of use of the thing is a historical act.[^e3] So is the discovery of social measures for the quantity of useful things. The difference among measures of commodities springs partly from the different natures of the objects measured and in part from convention.

The usefulness of a thing for human life makes it a use value.[^e4] For brevity, we call the useful thing itself, or the commodity-body - iron, wheat, diamond, etc. - a use value, good, article. In treating of use values, quantitative determinacy is invariably presupposed - as e.g. a dozen watches, a yard of linen, a ton of iron, etc. The use values of commodities provide the material for a special discipline, merceology (Warenkunde).[^e5] The use value is actualized only in use or consumption. Use values form the material content of wealth, whatever the social form of wealth may be. In the form of society considered here, they also form the material bearers of -- exchange value.

Exchange value appears first as quantitative relation, the proportion in which one type of use value exchanges with another type,[^e6] - a relation that changes constantly with time and place. The exchange value of a commodity thus seems to be something contingent and purely relative: and an inward, immanent exchange value (valeur intrinsèque) seems a contradictio in adjecto.[^e7] Let us take a closer look.

A single commodity - a quarter of wheat, for example - exchanges with other articles in very different proportions . Yet its exchange value remains unaltered, whether it be expressed in x boot polish, y silk, z gold, etc. It must therefore be something distinguishable from these, its different modes of expression.

Now let us take two commodities, e.g. wheat and iron. Whatever their exchange relation, it is always possible to present it in an equality, wherein a given quantum of wheat is set equal to some quantum of iron, e. g., 1 quarter wheat = a hundredweight iron. What does this equality say? That in two different things - in 1 quarter of wheat but equally in a hundredweight of iron - the same value exists. Both are therefore equal to a third, which in and for itself is neither the one nor the other. Each of the two, insofar as it is exchange value, must therefore be reducible to this third thing independently of the other.

A simple geometric example illustrates this. To determine and compare the areas of rectilinear figures, each is resolved into triangles. The triangle itself is reduced to an expression that is quite different from its visible figure – half the product of its base line and its height. Similarly, the exchange values of commodities are to be reduced to something common (ein Gemeinsames) of which they present more or less.

That the substance of exchange value is quite different from, and independent of, the commodity's physical-tangible existence (Existenz) or its being (Dasein) as use value is shown by its exchange relation, which is characterized precisely by abstraction from use value. One commodity is just as good as any other, in terms of exchange value, if only it is available in the right proportion.[^e8]

Thus, independently of their exchange relation or the form in which they appear as exchange-values, commodities are to be considered first of all as values per se (schlechthin). [^e9]

As objects of use, or goods, commodities are corporeally different things. Their value, on the other hand, forms their unity. This unity does not spring from nature, but from society. The communal social substance that is merely differently presented in different use values is — labor.

As values, commodities are nothing but crystallized labor. The unit of measure of labor itself is simple average labor, the character of which admittedly changes in different countries and cultural epochs, but is given in an existing society. More complicated labor figures only as a potentiated or rather multiplied simple labor, so that, for example, a smaller quantum of complicated labor equals a larger quantum of simple labor. How this reduction is regulated is irrelevant here. That it is constantly taking place is shown by experience. A commodity may be the product of the most complicated labor. Its value sets it equal with the product of simple labor and thus presents itself merely as a determinate quantum of simple labor.

A use value or good has a value only because labor is objectified or materialized in it. How is the magnitude of its value measured? By the quantum of the "value-forming substance", labor, put into it (in ihm enthaltenen). The quantity of labor itself is measured by its duration -- and labor time has its standard of measure in determinate periods of time, such as hours, days, etc.

It might seem that, if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantum of labor expended in its production, then the more inept or lazy a man is, the more valuable his commodity would be - he needs more labor time to produce it. But only the labor time that is socially necessary counts as value-forming. Socially necessary labor time is the labor time required to produce a given use value under present socially normal production conditions and with the socially average degree of skill and intensity of labor. For example, after the introduction of the steam loom in England it took perhaps half as much labor to transform a given quantum of yarn into cloth as it had before. The English hand weaver still indeed needed the same labor time for the transformation, but the product of his individual hour of labor now presented only half a social labor-hour and accordingly dropped to half its former value.

So only the quantum of socially necessary labor, or the labor time socially necessary for the production of a use value determines the magnitude of its value. The single commodity figures here generally as an average specimen of its type.[^e10] Commodities therefore have the same value magnitude when equally great quanta of labor are put into them, or they can be produced in the same labor time. The value of a commodity stands in the same relation to the value of every other commodity as the labor time necessary for the production of the one stands to the labor time necessary for the production of the other. "As values, all commodities are merely determinate masses of congealed (festgeronnener) labor time"[^e11].

The value magnitude of a commodity would therefore remain constant if the labor time required for its production were constant. However, the latter changes with every change in the productive power of labor. The productive power of labor is determined by manifold circumstances, including the average degree of skill among the workers, the stage of development of science and its technological applicability, social combination within the production process, the range and effectivity of the means of production, and by natural relations. The same quantum of labor, for example, may yield 8 bushels of wheat during a favorable season and only 4 during an unfavorable one. The same quantum of labor provides more metal in rich mines than in poor ones, etc. Diamonds occur rarely in the earth's crust and, on average, their discovery costs a lot of labor time. Consequently, they present a lot of labor in a small volume. Jacob doubts that the full value of gold has ever been paid. This holds still more for diamonds. According to Eschwege, in 1823 the total eighty-year yield of the Brazilian diamond mines had not yet reached the value of the 1½ year average product of the Brazilian sugar or coffee plantations. With richer mines, the same labor-quantum would present itself in more diamonds and their value would sink. //

Were one to succeed in transforming coal into diamonds with little labor, their value might fall below that of bricks. In general: the greater the productive power of labor, the less the labor time required to produce an article, the less the mass of labor crystallized in it, and the less its value. Conversely, the smaller the productive power of labor, the greater the labor time necessary for the production of an article and the greater its value. The value magnitude of a commodity thus varies directly as the quantum and inversely as the productive power of labor that actualizes itself in it.

We now know the substance of value. It is labor. We know the measure of its magnitude. It is labor time. Its form - which stamps value precisely as exchange value - remains to be analyzed. But first, the determinations we have already found need to be developed a bit more closely.

A thing can be use value without being exchange value. So it is when its being for humans is not mediated through labor; thus are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, wild timber, etc. A thing can be useful and the product of human labor without being a commodity. One who meets his own need through his own product, makes use value, indeed, but not commodity. To produce a commodity, one needs to produce not just use value, but use value for others, social use value. Finally, a thing cannot be value unless it be object of use. If a thing is useless, then the labor put into it (in ihm enthaltene) is also useless; it does not count as labor and thus forms no value.

Originally, the commodity appeared to us as something double-edged, as use value and exchange value. A closer look will show that the labor put into the commodity is also double-edged. This point, which I first developed critically,[^e12] is the crux around which the understanding of political economy revolves.

Let us take two commodities, for example, one coat and 10 yards of linen. The former has double the value of the latter, so that if 10 yards of linen = W, the coat = 2 W.

The coat is a use value: it meets a particular need. Its coming into being requires a determinate type of purposeful productive activity. The type of this activity is determined (bestimmt) by purpose, mode of operation, object, means and result. We call labor useful labor, for short, when its usefulness (Nützlichkeit) is exhibited in the use value of its product or in the fact that its product is a use value. Labor that comes under this heading - 'useful labor' - is always of a type that relates the labor to the useful effect whose coming into being it has as object.

Just as coat and linen are qualitatively different use values, so tailoring and weaving - the labors that mediate their being - are qualitatively different. It is only because these use values are qualitatively different and thus products of qualitatively different useful labors, that they can even confront each other as commodities. Coat does not exchange itself for coat, the same use value for the same use value.

In the totality of different types of use values or commodity-bodies, there appears a totality of equally diverse useful labors, differing according to genus, species, family, subspecies, variety — a social division of labor. A social division of labor is a condition of existence for the production of commodities. But the production of commodities is not, conversely, a condition of existence for a social division of labor. In the ancient Indian community, labor is divided socially, without the products becoming commodities. Or, to take an example closer by: labor is systematically divided in every factory, but this division is not mediated by the workers exchanging their individual products. Only the products of self-standing private labors that are independent of each another confront each other as commodities.

We have thus seen: In the use value of each commodity, there is a determinate purposeful, productive activity or useful labor. Use values cannot confront each other as commodities unless qualitatively different useful labors are put into them. In a society whose products universally take the form of commodities, that is, in a society of commodity producers, this qualitative difference between useful labors - labors that are carried out independently of each other as the private operations of self-standing producers - develops into a multi-faceted system, a social division of labor.

For a coat it is all the same whether it is worn by the tailor or by the tailor's customer. In either case it acts as use value. Similarly, the relationship between the coat and the labor that produces it is not altered, in and for itself, by the fact that tailoring has become a profession, a self-standing member of the social division of labor. Human beings tailored for thousands of years before any one of them became a tailor - they tailored whenever the need for clothes required it. But the existence of coat, linen, and every element of material wealth that is not present in nature, had always to be mediated by a specific purposive productive activity, an activity that assimiliated particular natural stuffs to particular human needs. Labor as forming use values, as useful labor, is therefore a condition of existence of human beings that is independent of all social forms; it is an eternal natural necessity, mediating the metabolism between human beings and nature, and so mediating human life.

The use values coat, linen, etc. - in short, the commodity-bodies - are compounds of two elements: labor and natural stuff. If one subtracts the sum total of all the different useful labors put into coat, linen, etc., a material substrate always remains, something present in nature apart from the intervention of human beings. The human being can only proceed in its own productions as nature itself does, that is, only by altering the form of the material.[^e13] The human is morevover constantly supported by natural forces in this labor of formation itself. Thus labor is not the sole source of the use values it produces. That is, labor is not the sole source of material wealth - labor is its father, as William Petty says, and the earth its mother.

Let us now move on from the commodity as object of use, to commodity value.

The value of the coat is double the value of the linen, on our assumption above. This is a difference but only a quantitative one, and not of interest to us at this point. We therefore remember that if the value of a coat is twice as great as that of 10 yards of linen, 20 yards of linen have the same magnitude of value as one coat.

As values, a coat and linen are things of the same substance, objective expressions of same-kinded labor (homogeneous, gleichartiger,) labor. Tailoring and weaving, however, are qualitatively different labors [i.e. other-kinded, heterogeneous labors]. However, there are states of society in which the same human being alternately tailors and weaves; these two different modes of labor are then only modifications of the labor of the same individual - they are not yet particular, fixed functions of different individuals. But even with our tailor, the coat he makes today and the trousers he makes tomorrow only presuppose variations of the same individual labor. //

Furthermore, in our capitalist society, one sees that a given portion of human labor is alternately (abwechselnd) supplied in the form of tailoring or weaving, depending on the changing (wechselnd) direction of the demand for labor. This change in the form (Formwechsel) of the labor may not happen without friction, but it must happen. If we disregard the determinateness of the productive activity and therefore the useful character of the labor, what remains is an expenditure of human labor-power. Although tailoring and weaving are qualitatively different productive activities, both alike are productive expenditures of human brain, muscle, nerve, hand, etc. In this sense both are human labor. They are just two different forms in which to expend human labor-power.

Of course, human labor-power itself must be more or less developed in order to be expended in this or that form. The value of commodities, however, presents human labor as such, the expenditure of human labor-power in general. Now, just as in bourgeois society a general or a banker plays a great role, while the human simpliciter plays a very modest one[^e14], so it is here with human labor. It is the expenditure of simple labor-power, which every ordinary human being, without any particular development, possesses in his bodily organism.

The labor-power of a farm laborer, for example, figures as simple labor-power, and its expenditure as simple labor or human labor without further embellishment; the labor of tailoring, on the other hand, figures as expenditure of more highly developed labor power. While the working day of the farm laborer is presented in a value-expression of, say, ½ W, the working day of the tailor might be presented in a value-expression of W.[^e15] However, this difference is only quantitative. If the coat is the product of a day's labor of the tailor, it has the same value as the product of two days' labor of the farm laborer. But that means the tailor's labor only ever counts as multiplied farm labor. //

The different proportions, in which the different labor-types are reduced to simple labor as their unity of measure, are fixed (festgesetzt) by a social process behind the backs of the producers and therefore appear to them to be given by custom. For the sake of simplicity in what follows, any type of labor-power is taken immediately for simple labor-power, whereby only the effort of reduction is spared.

Just as in the values coat and linen, the difference of their use values is abstracted, so too in the labor that these values present the difference in useful forms - the forms whereby they are tailoring on the one hand and weaving on the other - is also abstracted. The use values coat and linen are combinations of special-purpose productive activities with cloth and yarn while the values coat and linen are mere gelatinizations of homogeneous labor; so also the labor put into these values figures not through its productive relation to cloth and yarn, but only as expenditure of human labor-power. Tailoring and weaving are formative elements of the use values coat and linen precisely because of their different qualities; they are the substance of the coat-value and the linen-value only to the extent that their particular quality is abstracted and both possess the same quality - the quality: human labor.

Coats and linen are not only values in general, but values of a determinate magnitude, and, as we have assumed, a coat is worth twice as much as 10 yards of linen. Where does this difference in their magnitude of value come from? From the fact that only half as much labor is put into the linen as into the coat, so that labor-power must be expended for twice as much time to produce the latter as to produce the former.

Thus, if, with reference use value, the labor put into the commodity figures only qualitatively, with reference to value magnitude, it figures only quantitatively, having already been reduced to human labor without any further quality. There, the question is how and what the labor is, here it is how much, how long it takes. Since the magnitude of the value of a commodity merely measures the quantum of labor put into it, there must be some proportion in which two commodities are values of equal magnitude.

If the productive power, that is to say, all the useful labor required for the production of a coat, remains unaltered, then the value magnitude of coats increases with their own quantity. If 1 coat presents x working days, then 2 coats present 2 x working days, etc. But suppose that the labor time necessary for the production of a coat doubles or halves. In the first case, one coat has the same value as two coats previously; in the latter case, two coats have only as much value as one previously; although in both cases a coat still provides the same service and the useful labor put into it is still of the same quality. But the quantum of labor expended in its production has altered.

A greater quantum of use value forms greater material wealth in and for itself: two coats are more than one. With two coats one can clothe two human beings, with one coat only one, etc. Nevertheless, an increased mass of material wealth can correspond to a simultaneous fall in its magnitude of value. The possibility of such opposite movement arises from the double-edged determination of labor. Of course, productive power is always the productive power of useful, concrete labor. It expresses only the degree of efficacy of purposive productive activity in a given span of time. Useful labor thus becomes a richer or poorer source of products in direct proportion to the rise or fall of its productive power. //

On the other hand, a change in productive power does not in and for itself affect the labor presented in value. Since productive power belongs to the concrete useful form of labor, it can of course no longer touch labor where its concrete useful form is abstracted. The same labor in the same span of time therefore always presents itself in the same value magnitude, however much the productive power changes. But it provides different quanta of use values in the same span of time - more when the productive power increases, and less when it decreases. In the former case, it may happen that less labor is put into two coats than formerly went into one. The same change in productive power, which increases the fruitfulness of labor and thus the mass of use values it provides, can also reduce the value magnitude of this increased total mass, namely if it shortens the labor time necessary for its production. The reverse is also true.

From what has been said so far, it follows that although there are not two different types of labor in the commodity, the same labor is determined differently and even in opposite ways, depending on whether it is related to the use value of the commodity, as its product, or to the commodity value, as its merely objective expression. Just as the commodity must above all be an object of use in order to be value, so labor must above all be useful labor, purposive productive activity, in order to count as expenditure of human labor-power and therefore as human labor simpliciter.

Since so far only value substance and value magnitude have been determined, we now turn to the analysis of value form.

To start, let us return to the first form of appearance of commodity-value.

We take two quanta of commodities that cost the same amount of labor time to produce, and thus are equal value magnitudes, and we have 40 yards of linen = 2 coats, or 40 yards of linen are worth two coats. We see that the value of the linen is expressed in a determinate quantum of coats.

The value of a commodity, thus presented in the use value of another commodity, is called its relative value.

The relative value of a commodity can change, although its value remains constant. Conversely, its relative value can remain constant, although its value changes. The equality 40 yards of linen = 2 coats affirms that both commodities cost the same amount of labor. However, with each change in the productive power of the labors that produce them, the labor time necessary for their production changes. Let us consider the influence of such changes on relative value.

I. Let the value of the linen change (wechseln, vary), while the coat-value remains constant. The value of the linen doubles if the labor time expended for its production doubles - for example as a result of the incresasing infertility of the flax fields. Instead of 40 yards of linen = 2 coats, we would then have: 40 yards of linen = 4 coats, since 2 coats now contain only half as much labor time as 40 yards of linen. The value of the linen decreases by half, on the other hand, if the labor time necessary for its production of the linen decreases by half - for example as a result of improved looms. Accordingly, now: 40 yards of linen = 1 coat. The relative value of commodity A, i.e., its value expressed in terms of commodity B, thus rises and falls in direct proportion with the value of commodity A, when the value of commodity B remains constant.

II. Let the value of the linen remain constant, while the coat-value changes (wechseln, vary). If under these circumstances the labor time necessary for the production of the coat doubles - e.g. as a result of a bad wool-shearing season - then instead of 40 yards of linen = 2 coats we now have: 40 yards of linen = 1 coat. If, on the other hand, the value of the coat falls by half, then 40 yards of linen = 4 coats. If the value of commodity A remains the same, its relative value, expressed in commodity B, falls or rises in inverse proportion to the change in the value of B.

If we compare the different cases I and II, it can be seen that the same change in relative value can arise from completely opposite causes. Thus, from 40 yards of linen = 2 coats, 1) the equality 40 yards of linen = 4 coats may arise either because the value of the linen doubles or because the value of the coats falls by half, and 2) the equality 40 yards of linen = 1 coat may arise either because the value of the linen falls by half or the value of the coat rises to double.

III. The labor-quanta necessary for the production of linen and coats vary simultaneously, in the same direction and in the same proportion. In this case, we still have 40 yards of linen = 2 coats, however their values have altered. We discover their change in value as soon as we compare them with a third commodity whose value remains constant. If the values of all commodities rose or fell simultaneously and in the same proportion, their relative values would remain unchanged. Their actual change in value would come out in the fact that the same labor period would now provide a greater or smaller quantum of commodities, universally.

IV. The labor times necessary for the production of linen and coats, and therefore their values, may vary simultaneously in the same direction, but to unequal degrees, or in opposite directions, etc. The influence of all possible such combinations on the relative value of a commodity is simply derived by applying Cases I., II., and III.

We have just examined how far changes in the relative magnitude of the value of a commodity, linen, mirror a change in its own value magnitude, and have in general only considered the relative value under its quantitative aspect. We now turn to its form. If relative value is the presentation-form of value, then the expression of the equivalence of two commodities, such as x commodity A = y commodity B or 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, is the simple form of relative value.

I. First or simple form of relative value:

20 yards of linen = 1 coat. (x commodity A = y commodity B)

This form is somewhat difficult to analyze because it is simple.[^e16] The determinations distinguished in it are veiled, undeveloped, abstract, and therefore can be separated and held fast only with some effort of the power of abstraction. But this much is evident at first glance: that the form remains the same whether it be 20 yards of linen = 1 coat or 20 yards of linen = x coats.[^e17]

Linen comes into the world in the form of a use value or useful thing. Its stiff-linen bodiliness or natural form is therefore not its value form, but rather its exact opposite. It first shows its own proper value being through another commodity, relating to the coat as its [the linen's] equal. If linen were not itself value, it could not relate to the coat as value, as its equal. It sets itself equal with the coat qualitatively by relating itself to it as objectification of homogeneous human labor, i.e., of its [the linen's] own value substance. It sets itself equal with just one coat instead of x coats because it is not only value in general, but value of a determinate magnitude, and one coat contains just as much labor as 20 yards of linen. //

By thus relating to the coat, the linen strikes several flies with one swat. Since the other commodity is something the linen sets equal to itself as value, the linen thereby relates itself to itself as value. By relating itself to itself as value, it simultaneously distinguishes itself from itself as use value. By expressing its value magnitude – and value magnitude is both value in general and quantitatively measured value – in a coat, it gives its value-being a value-form that is distinct from its immediate existence. By presenting itself as something differentiated within itself, it presents itself as actually a commodity for the first time – a useful thing that is also a value. Insofar as the linen is a use value, it is a self-standing thing. Its value, on the other hand, appears only in relation to another commodity -- to the coat, for example. This is a relation in which the commodity-type coat is set as the linen's equal qualitatively and thus figures in some determinate quantity, as its equal (gleichgilt), [one in which the coat] replaces it and is exchangeable with it. Thus value acquires a form of its own, distinct from use-value, only through its presentation as exchange-value.

The expression of the linen-value in coat imposes a new form on the coat itself. In fact, what does the value form of the linen say? That the coat is exchangeable with it. As it walks or lies, with skin and hair, in its natural form coat, it now has the form immediate exchangeability with other commodities, the form of exchangeable use value or equivalent. The determination 'equivalent' contains not only that a commodity is value simpliciter, but that, in its thingly shape, in its use form, it figures for other commodities as value, and so is there as exchange value immediately for the other commodity.

As value, the linen consists only of labor, forming a transparent crystallized gelatinization of labor. In actuality, however, this crystal is very opaque. Insofar as labor can be discovered in a commodity -- and not every commodity-body shows the trace of labor -- it is not undifferentiated human labor, but weaving, spinning, etc.; and these by no means form its only substance, but are rather entwined (verquickt) with natural materials (Naturstoffen). //

To hold fast to linen as a mere thingly (dinglich) expression of human labor, one must ignore everything that actually makes it a thing (Ding). The objectivity (Gegenständlichkeit) of the human labor that is itself abstract, without further quality and content, is necessarily abstract objectivity -- a thought-thing (Gedankending). Thus, a flax weaving (Flachsgewebe, the woven flax) becomes a brain spinning (Hirngespinnst, sc. 'figment of the imagination'). But commodities are thing_s (Sachen). Whatever they are, they must be thing_ly or show in their own thing_ly relations. In the production of linen, a determinate quantum of human labor-power has been expended. Linen's value is the merely objective reflection (gegenständliche Reflex) of the labor thus expended, but it is not reflected in the linen's own body. It reveals itself, attains sensuous expression, through its value relation to the coat. It is by the linen's setting the coat as its equal, as value, while at the same time distinguishing itself from the coat, as object of use (Gebrauchgegenstand), that the coat becomes the form of appearance of the linen-value in opposition to the linen-body - the linen's value form in distinction from its natural form.[^e18]

In the relative expression of value: '20 yards of linen = 1 coat', or: 'x yards of linen are y coat's-worth', the coat figures only as value, or gelatinization of labor, but it is precisely thereby that the gelatinization of labor figures as coat, and coat as the form in which human labor congeals.[^e18a] The use value coat only becomes a form of appearance of linen-value, because linen relates to the coat-material as immediate materialization (Materiatur) of abstract human labor, that is, labor homogeneous with that objectified in itself. The object coat figures for it as sensuously tangible objectivity of homogeneous human labor, and thus as value in natural form. //

Since linen is, as value, the same in essence with the coat (gleichen Wesens mit dem Rock), the natural form coat thus becomes the form of appearance of linen's own value. But the labor presented in the use-value coat is not human labor simpliciter, but rather a determinate, useful labor, tailoring labor. Human labor simpliciter, expenditure of human labor-power, admits any determination, but is in and for itself indeterminate. It can only actualize, and objectify, itself when human labor-power is expended in determinate form, as determinate labor, for only determinate labor is confronted with a natural stuff (Naturstoff), an external material, in which it objectifies itself. Only the Hegelian concept manages to objectify itself without an external stuff.[^e19]

The linen cannot relate to the coat as value or human labor incarnate without relating to tailoring as the immediate actualization-form of human labor. What interests the linen about the use value coat, however, is neither its woollen coziness nor its buttoned-up essence nor any other useful quality that stamps it as use value. //

A coat serves only to present its value-objectivity in contrast to its stiff-linen use objectivity. It would have achieved the same purpose if it had expressed its value in assafoetida or poudrette or boot polish. Thus tailoring does not figure for it, insofar as it is special-purpose productive activity, useful labor, but only insofar as it is, as determinate labor, the actualization-form, the mode of objectification, of human labor in general. If the linen expressed its value in boot polish instead of in a coat, then polish-ing instead of tailoring would be considered the immediate actualization-form of abstract human labor.[^e19a] A use value or commodity-body only becomes form of appearance of value or equivalent if another commodity refers to the concrete, useful labor-type put into it as the immediate actualization-form of abstract human labor.

We here stand at the crux of all the difficulties that hinder an understanding of the value-form. It is relatively easy to distinguish the value of the commodity from its use value, or the labor that forms the use value from the same labor, insofar as it is calculated merely as the expenditure of human labor-power in the value of the commodity. If you consider commodity or labor in the one form, you do not consider it in the other and vice versa. These abstract opposites (Gegensätze) fall apart by themselves and are therefore easy to keep apart. //

It is otherwise with the value-form, which exists only in the relation of commodity to commodity. The use value or commodity-body plays a new role here. It becomes the form of appearance of commodity value, and thus of its own opposite. Likewise, the concrete useful labor put into the use value becomes its own opposite, the mere form of actualization of abstract human labor. //

Instead of falling apart from each other, the opposing (gegensätzlichen) determinations of the commodity reflect each other here. As strange as this may seem at first glance, on further consideration it proves to be necessary. The commodity is from the start a double-edged thing, use value and value, product of useful labor and gelatinization of abstract labor. In order to present itself as what it is, it must therefore double its form. It possesses the form of a use value from nature. It is its natural form. It acquires its value form only in interaction with other commodities. But its value form must itself be an objective form. The only objective forms of commodities are their use-shapes, their natural forms. //

Now since the natural form of a commodity, of linen, for example, is the direct opposite of its value form, it must take another natural form, the natural form of another commodity, as its value-form. What it cannot do immediately for itself, it can do immediately for another commodity -- and therefore, in a roundabout way, for itself. It cannot express its value in its own body or in its own use value, but it can relate itself to another use value or commodity-body as immediate value-existence. It cannot relate itself to the concrete labor put into itself, but rather to that put into another commodity-type, as the bare actualization-form (blosser Verwirklichungsform) of abstract human labor. //

To do so, it need only set the other commodity equal with itself as equivalent. For a commodity, the use value of another commodity only generally exists, in so far as it serves in this way as the form of appearance of the former's value. If, in the simple relative value-expression: 'x commodity A = y commodity B,' one considers only the quantitative relation, then one finds only the laws developed above concerning the movement of relative value, which are all based on the fact that the magnitude of value of commodities is determined by the labor time necessary for their production. But if we consider the value-relation of the two commodities according to its qualitative side, we discover in that simple expression of value the secret of the value form and hence, in nuce, of money.[^e20]

Our analysis has shown that the relative value expression of a commodity encompasses two different value forms. Linen expresses its value and its determinate value magnitude in the coat. It presents its value in value relation to another commodity, and thus as exchange value. The other commodity, the coat in which it relatively expresses its value, attains precisely thereby the form of a use value immediately exchangeable with it or its equivalent. Both forms - relative value form for the one, equivalent form for the other - are forms of exchange value. Both are, in fact, only moments, mutually interdependent determinations, of the same relative expression of value, but distributed as poles across the two commodity extremes that are set equal.

Quantitative determinacy is not included in the equivalent form of a commodity. The determinate relation in which coat is equivalent to linen, does not arise from its equivalent form -- the form of its direct exchangeability with the linen -- but rather from the determination of the magnitude of value by labor time. Linen can only present its own value in coats insofar as it relates to a determinate coat-quantum as a given quantum of crystallized human labor. //

If the coat-value alters, so also does this relation. But for the relative value of the linen to change, it must exist, and it can only be formed given coat-value. Once it is assumed, whether now the linen presents its own value in 1, 2 or x coats depends entirely on the value magnitude of a yard of linen and the number of yards whose value is to be presented in coat-form. The value magnitude of a commodity is something it can only express in the use value of another commodity, as relative value. Conversely, it is only as the material in which the value of another commodity is expressed that a commodity attains the form of an immediately exchangeable use value or equivalent.

This distinction is obscured by a characteristic peculiarity of the relative expression of value in its simple or first form. The equality: 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, or '20 yards of linen are worth a coat', evidently includes the identical equality: 1 coat = 20 yards of linen, or '1 coat is worth 20 yards of linen'. The relative value-expression of the linen, in which the coat figures as equivalent, thus contains, by a reference back (rückbezüglich, reflexively), the relative value-expression of the coat, in which the linen figures as equivalent.

The two determinations of the value form - or the two modes of presentation of commodity value as exchange value - are merely relative; yet they do not seem both to be relative in the same degree. In the relative value of the linen: 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, the exchange value of the linen is expressly presented as its relation to another commodity. The coat, for its part, is equivalent but only insofar as the linen relates to it as appearance-form of its own value and thus as immediately exchangeable with it. Only within this relation is it equivalent. But it behaves (verhält) passively. It takes no initiative. It finds itself in relation because it is related to. The character [viz. 'Equivalent'] that accrues from its relation with the linen does not appear as a result of its [own] relating, but rather as present without its doing [Zutun]. //

But more: The determinate way and mode in which the linen relates to the coat is calculated to flatter it, however modest it may be and in no way the product of a "tailor run mad with pride". The linen relates to the coat specificially as the sensuously existing materialization (Materiatur) of human labor in abstracto and therefore as the existing body of value. The coat only is thus because and to the extent that the linen relates to it in this determinate way. Its being as equivalent is just a determination of reflection of the linen. But it seems just the opposite. On the one hand, the coat does not even bother to do any relating. On the other hand, the linen relates to the coat, not to make something of it, but because the coat is something apart from this relating.

The finished product of the the linen's relation to the coat - the coat's equivalent form, its determination as immediately exchangeable use value - seems to belong to the coat as thing (dinglich), as something even outside the relation to the linen, just like its property of keeping warm. In the first or simple form of relative value: '20 yards of linen = 1 coat', this false semblance is not yet fixed, because it immediately states the opposite as well: that the coat is the equivalent of the linen and that each of the two commodities possesses this determination only because and insofar as the other makes it the relative expression of its value .[^e21]

The development of the form of value is identical for both commodities in the simple form of relative value, or the simple form of the expression of the equivalence of two commodities -- though in each case in the opposite direction. The relative value-expression is furthermore uniform (einheitlich) with respect to each of the two commodities: for the linen presents its value only in one commodity, the coat, and vice versa; but for two commodities this expression of value is doubled, different for each one. Finally, each of the two commodities is only equivalent for the other single commodity type and thus only a singular equivalent.

Such an equality as 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, or 'twenty yards of linen are worth one coat', evidently expresses the value of the commodity only in a very limited and one-sided way. For example, if I compare the linen with commodities other than coats, I obtain other relative value-expressions, other equalities, such as 20 yards of linen = u coffee, 20 yards of linen = v tea, etc. Linen has just as many different relative value-expressions as there are commodities that differ from it, and the number of its relative value-expressions grows constantly with the number of newly emerging commodity types.[^e22]

The first form, 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, yielded two relative expressions for the value of two commodities. This second form gives the most colorful mosaic of relative expressions of value - of the same commodity . Nor does anything seem to be gained as regards the expression of the magnitude of its value - for the magnitude of value of the linen is presented just as exhaustively in 20 yards of linen = 1 coat as in 20 yards of linen = tea, etc. where it remains the same in each expression; nor is anything gained for the form-determination of the equivalent, for in 20 yards of linen = u coffee, etc., coffee, etc., are only singular equivalents, just as the coat was.

Nevertheless, this second form contains an essential advance in development. The linen's value is not expressed by chance now in coats, now in coffee, etc.; it is rather expressed both in coats and in coffee, etc. -- either in this commodity or in that or in the third, etc. The further determination becaomes apparent as soon as this second or unfolded form of the relative expression of value is presented in its connectedness (in ihrem Zusammenhang). We then obtain:

II. Second or unfolded form of relative value:

20 yards of linen = 1 coat or = u coffee or = v tea or = x iron or = y wheat or = etc.

z commodity A = u commodity B or = v commodity C or = w commodity D or = x commodity E or = y commodity F or = etc.

The first form plainly constitutes the building block (Grundelement) of the second form, for the latter consists of many simple relative value-expressions, such as 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, 20 yards of linen = u coffee, etc.

But in the first form: 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, it can seem a chance fact that these two commodities are exchangeable in this determinate quantitative proportion. In the second form, by contrast, a determining background immediately shines through that differs essentially from the chance appearance. The value of the linen remains the same in magnitude whether it is presented in the form of coat, coffee, iron, etc., in countless different commodities belonging to the most multifarious possessors. The accidental relation between two individual possessors of commodities falls away. It is becoming clear that it is not exchange that regulates the magnitude of the value of the commodity, but rather the other way around: the value of the commodity regulates its exchange relations.

In the expression: 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, the coat figured as form of appearance of the labor objectified in the linen. Thus, the labor put into the linen was set equal to the labor put into the coat and thereby determined as homogeneous human labor. However, this determination did not emerge expressly. In the first form, the labor put into the linen was immediately set as equal only with the labor of tailoring. This second form is different. In the endless, indefinitely extensible series of relative expressions of its value, the linen relates to all possible commodity-bodies as mere forms of appearance of the labor put into it itself. It is thus first here that linen-value is truly presented as value, i.e., crystal of human labor in general.

The second form consists of a sum of equalities of the first form. Each of these equalities, like as 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, also includes the converse relation: 1 coat = 20 yards of linen, in which the coat presents its value in the linen and, precisely thereby, presents the linen as equivalent. Since this is true for each of the countless relative expressions of the value of linen, we obtain:

III. Third form of relative value: the second form reversed or related back

1 coat = 20 yards of linen.

u coffee = 20 yards of linen.

v tea = 20 yards of linen.

x iron = 20 yards of linen.

y wheat, etc. = 20 yards of linen.

The relative value-expression of commodities returns here in its original form: 1 coat = 20 yards of linen. But now this simple equality is further developed. Originally, it contained only this, that the coat's value acquires a form distinct from and independent of the use value coat or the coat-body itself through its expression in another commodity. Now the same form presents the coat as value vis-à-vis all other commodities; it is thus its universally valid value-form. Not only do the coat, but coffee, iron, wheat, in short, all other commodities, now express their value in the material linen. They all thereby present themselves to one other as the same materialization (Materiatur) of human labor. They differ now only quantitatively, which is why 1 coat, u coffee, x iron, etc. i.e., different quanta of these different things = 20 yards of linen, i.e. are equal to the same quantum of objectified human labor. //

Through their communal expression of value in the material linen, each commodity differentiates itself as exchange value from its own distinctive use value and at the same time they all relate to each other as value magnitudes, setting themselves as qualitatively equal and comparing (vergleichen) themselves quantitatively. It is only in this unified relative value-expression that they all appear for each other as values, and only thus does their value attain its adequate form of appearance as exchange value. In contrast to the unfolded relative value-form (Form II) which presents the value of one commodity through the space (Umkreis) of all other commodities, we call this unitary expression of value the universal relative value-form.

In form II: 20 yards of linen = 1 coat or = u coffee or = v tea or = x iron, etc., the linen unfolds its relative value-expression; it relates itself to each single commodity - coat, coffee, etc. - as a particular equivalent and to all of them together as the space (Umkreis) of its particular equivalent forms. No single commodity-type figures as equivalent simpliciter, as with the singular equivalent, but each only as one particular equivalent, each excluding the others. //

In form III - which is the second form related back and thus included in it - the linen appears, by contrast, as the genus form (Gattungsform) of equivalent for all other commodities. It is as if, outside and alongside lions, tigers, hares, and all the other actual animals, which, grouped together, form the different genera, species, subspecies, families, etc., of the animal kingdom, there also existed the animal, the individual incarnation of the whole animal kingdom. Such a singular, which encompasses within itself all actually existing types of the same thing_, is a universal -- like animal, god, etc. Just as linen became a singular equivalent through the fact that one other commodity related to it as form of appearance of value, so the linen, as the communal form of appearance of value for all commodities, becomes the universal equivalent, universal body of value, universal materialization (Materiatur) of abstract human labor. The particular labor materialized (materializierte) in it now figures as universal actualization-form of human labor, as universal labor.

With the presentation of the value of commodity A in commodity B, commodity B became a singular equivalent; it was irrelevant what particular sort of commodity B was. It was only necessary for the bodiliness of commodity B to be of another type than that of commodity A, and therefore also a product of another useful labor. By presenting its value in linen, the coat related to linen as the human labor actualized, and thus to linen-weaving as the actualization-form of human labor; but the particular determinacy whereby linen-weaving is distinguished from other labor-types was completely irrelevant. It only had to be another labor-type from tailoring and, for the rest, a determinate labor-type. //

Once linen becomes universal equivalent, it is otherwise. This use value -- in its particular determinacy, whereby it is linen in distinction from all other commodity types -- coffee, iron, etc. -- now becomes the universal value-form of all other commodities and therefore universal equivalent. The particular useful labor-type presented in it therefore now figures as the universal actualization-form of human labor, as universal labor, precisely to the extent that it is labor of this particular determinacy: linen-weaving, in distinction not only from tailoring, but also from coffee growing, mining, and all other labor-types. Conversely, in the relative value-expression of the universal equivalent linen (Form II), all other labor-types figure only as particular actualization-forms of human labor.

As values, commodities are expressions of the same unity, of abstract human labor. In the form of exchange value, they appear to each other as values and relate themselves to each other as values. In so doing, they also relate themselves to abstract human labor as their common social substance. Their social relation consists exclusively in the fact that they figure for each other as expressions of this, their social substance; as such they differ only quantitatively but are qualitatively the same and therefore substitutable for and exchangeable with one another. The commodity as useful thing has social determinacy insofar as it has use value for others beside its possessor, and thus meets social needs. //

But no matter to whose needs they relate, these useful properties only make it an object related to human needs, not a commodity for other commodities. Only what transforms mere objects of use into commodities can put them into relation with each other as commodities and thus into social rapport (Rapport). But this is their value. The form in which they figure (gelten) as values, as gelatinizations of human labor, is therefore their social form. For commodities, social form and value form or form of exchangeability, are thus one and the same. In the case where a commodity's natural form is at the same time its value form, it has the form of immediate exchangeability with other commodities and is therefore immediately social.

What distinguishes the simple relative value-form (Form I) 1 coat = 20 yards of linen from the universal relative value-form 1 coat = 20 yards of linen is just that now this equality forms a term of the series:

1 coat = 20 yards of linen

u coffee = 20 yards of linen

v tea = 20 yards of linen

and so on.

So it is really only distinct in this, that the linen has developed from a singular equivalent into a universal equivalent. In the simple relative value-expression it is not the commodity that is expressing its value magnitude that receives the form of immediate exchangeability, equivalent form, and thus immediately social form, but rather the commodity in which that value-magnitude is expressed; and the same applies to the universal relative value-expression. //

In the simple relative value form, though, this distinction is merely formal and fleeting. If in the equality 1 coat = 20 yards linen, the coat expresses its value relatively, i.e. in linen, and the linen thereby receives equivalent form, still this same equality immediately includes the relation back: 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, in which the coat receives the equivalent form and the value of the linen is relatively expressed. But here this uniform and mutual development of the value-form of both commodities as relative and equivalent value no longer holds. If the universal relative value-form 1 coat = 20 yards of linen, where the linen is universal equivalent, is reversed into 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, then the coat does not thereby become a universal equivalent for all other commodities, but only a particular equivalent of the linen. The relative value-form of the coat is only universal because it is at the same time the relative value-form of all other commodities. What is true of the coat is true of coffee, etc. //

It follows, therefore, that the universal relative value-form of commodities excludes them from the universal equivalent form. Conversely, a commodity such as linen, as soon as it has the universal equivalent form, is excluded from the universal relative value-form. The universal relative value-form of linen, uniform with the other commodities, would be: '20 yards of linen = 20 yards of linen'. But this is a tautology, and does not express the value magnitude of the commodity in its universal equivalent form, nor therefore in its always-exchangeable form. Instead, the relative value-expression specific to the universal equivalent is the unfolded relative value-form: 20 yards linen = 1 coat or = u coffee or = v tea or = u, etc.

In the universal relative value-expression of commodities, each commodity, coat, coffee, tea, etc., possesses a value-form differing from its natural-form, namely the form linen. And it is in this form that they relate to each other precisely as exchangeable things and as things exchangeable in quantitatively determined proportions, for if 1 coat = 20 yards of linen, x coffee = 20 yards of linen, etc., then 1 coat = x coffee, etc. Since all commodities are mirrored, as magnitudes of value, in one and the same commodity, they all reciprocally mirror each other as magnitudes of value. //

The natural forms they have as objects of use do not figure directly as forms of appearance of value for them, but only by this indirectionn(Umweg, detour). They are not immediately exchangeable -- not as they are immediately. They do not possess the form of immediate exchangeability with each other; or, their socially valid form is a mediated one. Conversely: by all other commodities relating themselves to linen as form of appearance of value, the natural form of linen becomes the form of its immediate exchangeability with all commodities, and thus immediately its universal social form.

A commodity only receives the universal equivalent form because and to the extent that it serves, for all other commodities, as a presentation of their universal relative, and thus non-immediate, form of value. Commodities in general must give themselves a relative form of value because their natural forms are merely their use-value forms; and they must give themselves a unitary (einheitlich), and thus universal, relative form of value in order to relate to each other as values, as homogeneous gelatins of human labor. One single commodity finds itself in the form of immediate exchangeability with all other commodities and so in immediately social form only because and to the extent that all other commodities are not in this form - or because the commodity in general is by default not in immediately exchangeable or social form, its immediate form being the form of its use value, not of its value.

One cannot tell, just from looking, that the form universal immediate exchangeability is in fact an opposite commodity form - [a form] as inseparable from the form not immediate exchangeability as is the positivity of one magnetic pole from the negativity of the other. So one can imagine it possible to imprint upon all commodities the stamp of immediate exchangeability, just as one can imagine it possible to make all workers into capitalists. In fact, however, universal relative value-form and universal equivalent form are opposite poles of the same social form of commodities - poles which reciprocally presuppose and repel each other .[^e23]

Linen, the universal equivalent, as immediately social materialization (Materiatur) of labor, is materialization of immediately social labor, while the other commodity-bodies present their value in linen, and are thus materializations (Materiatur) of non-immediately social labor.

In fact, use values are only all commodities as products of private labors that are independent of each other -- private labors which, as particular, though independent, members of a spontaneous system of division of labor, are materially dependent on each other. The labors are thus joined together socially just through their difference, their particular usefulness. Precisely for this reason the labors produce qualitatively different use values.

If these use values did not differ, they would not become commodities for each other. On the other hand, this different useful quality does not yet make products into commodities. If a peasant family produces coats and linen and wheat for their own consumption, these things confront the family as different products of their family labor, but they do not confront each other reciprocally as commodities. If labor were immediately social, i.e., communal labor, the products would acquire the immediately social character of a communal product for their producers, but not the character of commodities for each other. //

But we do not need to look far to find in what the social form consists for the reciprocally independent private labors put into commodities. It has already emerged from the analysis of the commodity. Their social form is their relating to each other as equal labor, and thus (since the equality of labors that differ toto coelo can only consist in an abstraction from their inequality) their relating to each other as human labor in general, as expenditures of human labor-power, as something which all human labors in fact are, whatever their content and mode of operation.

In every social form of labor, the labors of different individuals are related to each other as human labor, as here; but here it is this relation itself that figures as the specifically social form of labor. Now, none of these private labors in its natural form possesses this specifically social form: abstract human labor -- no more than the commodity, in its natural form, possesses the social form: mere gelatinization of human labor, or: value. But just as the natural form of one commodity, in this case linen, becomes universal equivalent form, in that all other commodities relate to it as the form of appearance of their own value, so also linen-weaving becomes the universal actualization-form of abstract human labor, or labor in immediately social form. The meter-rod of "sociality" must be borrowed from the nature of the relations proper to each mode of production, not from representations foreign to it. //

As was shown earlier, the commodity by nature excludes the immediate form of universal exchangeability and can therefore only develop the universal equivalent form as opposite; the same applies to the private labor inherent in commodities. Since they are not immediately social labor, first, the social form is a form distinct from the natural forms of actual useful labors, a form foreign to them and abstract, and second, all types of private labor maintain their social character only as opposite, in that they are all set equal to an excluded type of private labor, here, linen-weaving. This makes the latter the immediate and universal form of appearance of abstract human labor and thus labor in immediately social form. It therefore also presents itself immediately in a socially valid and universally exchangeable product.

The semblance (Schein) that the equivalent form of a commodity springs from its own nature as a thing, rather than being a mere reflection of the relations of the other commodities, is reinforced with the development of the singular equivalent into the universal equivalent - because the opposing moments of the value form no longer develop uniformly (gleichmässig) for the commodities related to each other; because the universal equivalent form distinguishes one commodity as something quite apart from all other commodities; and finally because this form is no longer the product of the relation of any single other commodity.

From the standpoint we have reached, however, the universal equivalent is by no means fixed in stone (verknöchert). How in fact was linen transformed into the universal equivalent? Through this, that it first presented its value relatively in a single commodity (form I), then it presented it relatively in all other commodities in turn (form II), and thus all other commodities, relating back, presented their value relatively in it (form III). //

The simple relative value-expression was the germ from which the universal equivalent form of the linen developed. Within this development, it changes its role. It begins by presenting its value magnitude in one other commodity and ends up serving as the material for the value-expression of all other commodities. What is true of the linen is true of every commodity. In its unfolded relative value-expression (Form II), which consists only of its many simple value-expressions, the linen does not yet figure as universal equivalent. Rather, every other commodity-body forms its equivalent here, is therefore immediately exchangeable with it, and can thus change places with it.

We thus finally obtain:

Form IV:

20 yards of linen = 1 coat or = u coffee or = v tea or = x iron or = y wheat or = u. s. w.

1 coat = 20 yards of linen or = u coffee or = v tea or = x iron or = y wheat or = u. s. w.

u coffee = 20 yards of linen or = 1 coat or = v tea or = x iron or = y wheat or = u. s. w.

v tea = u. s. w.

But each of these equalities, when inverted, yields coat, coffee, tea, etc., as universal equivalent, and therefore the value-expression in coat, coffee, tea, etc., as universal relative value-form of all other commodities. The universal equivalent form only belongs to one commodity in opposition to all other commodities; but it belongs to each commodity in opposition to all others. But if each commodity sets its own natural-form, as universal equivalent-form, in opposition to all other commodities, then all commodities exclude all from the universal equivalent-form and therefore exclude themselves from the socially valid presentation of their values.

We thus see: the analysis of the commodity reveals all the essential determinations of the value-form and the value-form itself in its opposite moments: the universal relative value-form, the universal equivalent form, and finally the never-ending series of simple relative value expressions - which first forms a transitional phase in the development of the value-form, ultimately to turn into the specifically relative value-form of the universal equivalent. //

But the analysis of the commodity revealed these forms as forms of commodity in general, and thus also as forms any commodities can take, but only as opposites (gegensätzlich), so that when commodity A is in one form-determination, commodities B, C, etc., assume the other in relation to it. The matter of decisive importance, though, was to discern the inner necessary connection between value-form,value substance and value magnitude - i.e., expressed ideally, to prove that the value form arises from the value concept.[^e24]

At first glance, a commodity seems a trivial and self-explanatory thing. Its analysis reveals that it is a very tricky thing, filled with metaphysical hairsplitting and theological peculiarities. As mere use value, it is a sensuous thing, and there is nothing mysterious about it, whether I consider that its properties meet human needs, or consider that it only first acquires these properties as a product of human labor. //

There is absolutely nothing perplexing in the fact that human beings, through their activity, alter the forms of natural substances in a way that is useful to them. When, for example, one makes wood into a table, the form of the wood is altered. Nevertheless, the table remains wood, an ordinary sensuous thing. But as soon as it makes its entrance as commodity, it is transformed into a sensuous supersensuous thing. The table stands not only with its feet on the ground, but, over against other commodities, it stands on its head and develops from its wooden head ideas much stranger than if it were to begin spontaneously to dance.[^e25]

Thus the mystical character of the commodity does not arise from its use value. Nor does it arise from the determinations of value, considered for themselves. //

For, firstly, however different useful labors or productive activities may be, it is a physiological truth that they are functions of a specifically human organism, in distinction from other organisms -- and that each such function, whatever its content and form, is essentially the expenditure of human brain, nerve, muscle, sense organ, etc. //

Secondly, what lies at the ground of the determination of the magnitude of value is the duration of that expenditure or the quantity of the labor -- and the quantity of labor can be distinguished even perceptually from its quality. In any state of society, the labor time that the production of means of life costs must interest human beings, although not in the same measure across different stages of development. //

Finally, the labor of human beings also takes on a social form as soon as, in any mode, they work for each other.

Take Robinson Crusoe on his island. Modest as he is by nature, he still has different types of needs to meet and so must perform useful labor of different types (make tools, construct furniture, tame llamas, fish, hunt, etc.) We do not speak here of prayer or the like, since our Robinson takes delight in it and regards such types of activity as rest. //

Despite the difference among his productive operations (Funktionen), he knows that they are only different activity-forms for the same Robinson, and thus only different modes of human labor. Necessity itself constrains him to distribute (verteilen) his time with precision between his different operations. Whether one or another takes up more or less space in his total activity (Gesamttätigkeit) depends on the greater or lesser difficulty that must be overcome to realize the intended use-effect. Experience teaches him this, and our Robinson, who saved the clock, ledger, ink and quill from the shipwreck, soon begins, as a good Englishman, to keep records about himself. His inventory contains a list of the objects of use in his possession, of the different operations required for their production, and finally of the labor time that determinate quanta of these different products cost him on average. //

Here the relations holding between Robinson and the things that form his self-made wealth are all so simple and transparent that even Mr. M. Wirth might understand them without any particular mental effort. And yet all the essential determinations of value are contained in them.

Let us now set in Robinson's place an association of free human beings who work with common means of production and expend their many individual labor-powers self-consciously as a single social labor-power. All the determinations of Robinson's labor are repeated, only socially instead of individually. However, one essential distinction arises. All of Robinson's products were exclusively his personal product and therefore were immediate objects of use for him. The total product of the association is a social product. One part (Teil) of this product serves as a means of production again. It remains social. But another part is consumed as means of life by the members of the association. It must therefore be distributed (verteilt) among them. The type of this distribution (Verteilung) will change with the particular type of the social productive organism itself and the corresponding historical level of development of the producers. //

Just for the sake of parallelism with commodity production, we may suppose that each producer's share (Anteil) of the means of life is determined by his labor time. Labor time would then play a dual role. Its distribution (Verteilung) according to a social plan regulates the proper proportion of the different labor operations to the different needs. On the other hand, labor time also serves as a measure of the individual producer's share (Anteil) of the common labor and thus also of the part of the common product that is individually consumable. The social relationships of human beings to their labor and their labor products remain transparently simple here, in both production and distribution.

Whence, then, comes the enigmatic character of the product of labor as soon as it assumes the form of a commodity?

If for human beings to relate their products to each other as values is for these thing_s to figure as mere thing_ly husks for homogenous human labor, then therein lies at the same time the converse: that it is only in thing_ly husk that their different labors figure as homogeneous human labor. They relate their different labors to each other as human labor by relating their products to each other as values. The personal relating is hidden by the thing_ly form. //

Value does not stand there with what value is written on its forehead. If human beings are to relate their products to each other as commodities, they are compelled to equate their different labors abstractly as human labor. They do not know this, but they do it -- by reducing the material thing to the abstraction: value. It is a spontaneous (naturwüchsig) and therefore unconscious, instinctive operation of their brain; it grows necessarily from the particular mode of their material production and the relations in which this production places them. //

First, their relation exists (ist da) practically. //

Second, though, because they are human beings, their relation exists for them as a relation. The way it exists for them (für sie da ist), or the way it is reflected in their brain, arises from the nature of the relation itself. //

Later they seek to uncover the secret of their own social product through science -- for the determination of a thing as value is as much their product as is language. //

Further, as the magnitude of value is concerned: the private labors that are carried out independently of one another - but which are completely interdependent as members of the spontaneous (naturwüchsig) division of labor - are continually reduced to their socially proportionate scale by the fact that, in the haphazard and ever-fluctuating exchange relationships of their products, the socially necessary labor time for their production is forcibly established as a regulating natural law, like the law of gravity, for example, when the house collapses over your head .[^e26]

The determination of the magnitude of value through labor time is therefore a secret hidden under the apparent movements of the relative values of commodities. Their own social movement has, for the producers, the form of a movement of things - things under whose control they stand, rather than controlling them. Finally, as for the value-form: it is precisely this form that instead of revealing the social relations of the private laborers and thus the social determinations (Bestimmtheiten) of their private labors, conceals them thing_wise (sachlich verschleiert). When I say that a coat, boots, etc. relate to linen as the universal materialization (Materiatur) of abstract human labor, the absurdity of this expression is immediately apparent. But when the producers of coats, boots, etc., relate these commodities to linen as a universal equivalent, the social relation of their private labors appears to them precisely in this absurd form.

The categories of bourgeois economy are constituted by just such forms. These thought-forms are socially valid, and thus objective, for the production-relations of this historically determinate social mode of production.

Private producers first enter into social contact mediated by their private products, thing_s. The social relations of their labors are and appear not as immediately social relations of the persons in their labor, but as thing_ly relations of the persons, or social relations of the thing_s. But the first and most universal presentation of a thing_ as a social thing is the transformation of the product of labor into a commodity.

The mysticism of the commodity arises from this: that the social determinations of their private labors appear to the private producers as social-natural determinations of the products of labor; i.e. that the social relations of persons in production appear to them as social relations of the thing_s to each other and to persons. The relations of private laborers to the total social labor objectify themselves over against them and thus exist for them in the forms of the objects. In a society of commodity producers, the universal social relation of production consists in their treating their products as commodities, i.e., as values, and relating their private labors to each other in this thing_ly form as equal human labor; for this, the most appropriate form of religion - with its cultus of the abstract human - is Christianity, especially in its bourgeois development, Protestantism, deism, etc. //

In the modes of production of ancient Asia, classical antiquity, etc., only a minor role is played by the transformation of the product into a commodity, and so by human beings living as commodity producers, but it becomes more significant as those communities enter the stage of their decline. Properly commercial peoples exist only in the intermundia of the ancient world, like Epicurus' gods, or like Jews in the pores of Polish society. //

Those older organisms of social production are exceptionally simpler and more transparent than the bourgeois form, but they are based on the unripeness of the human individual, who has not yet torn away the umbilical cord of its natural species-connection with others, or else on immediate relationships of domination and servitude. They are limited by a low level of development of the productive forces of labor and the correspondingly narrow relations human beings bear within the material process of producing their life, and thereby to each other and to nature. This limitation in activity is mirrored in ideas by the ancient religions of nature and tribe. //

The religious reflection of the actual world can only disappear once the practical relations of everyday working life present human beings each day with transparent, reasonable relations to nature and each other. Only such relations can present themselves as what they are. It is only as a product of freely associated human beings, under their conscious, planned control, that the figure of the social life-process, i.e., of the material process of production, loses its mystical veil of fog. For this, however, a material basis of society is required, or a series of material conditions of existence, each of which is itself the merely spontaneous product of a long and painful history of development.

Political economy has indeed analyzed value and the magnitude of value, if incompletely.[^e27] It has never even asked the question: why is labor presented in value, why is the measure of labor by duration presented in the magnitude of value? These forms have it emblazoned on their foreheads that they belong to a social formation in which the production process masters human beings, and is not yet mastered by them; but the bourgeois consciousness of the political economists takes them to be just as much a self-explanatory natural necessity as productive labor itself. They thus treat of pre-bourgeois forms of the social organism of production just as the church fathers did pre-Christian religions.[^e28]

Their dull, vapid dispute over the role of nature in the formation of exchange value proves the extent to which one section of economists is deceived by the fetishism clinging to the world of commodities, i.e. by the semblance that the social determinations of labor pertain to objects. Since it is the labor put into a thing that is expressed in a determinate social fashion as exchange value, it can no more contain the stuff of nature than can, say, the rate of exchange.

In bourgeois production, the commodity form is the most universal and least developed form - it thus appears already in earlier periods of production, though not in the same way, as predominant (herrschend) and thus characteristic; it was thus relatively easy to penetrate. But what of more concrete forms, for example, capital? The fetishism of classical economy here becomes palpable.

But let us not get ahead of ourselves; one more example pertaining just to the commodity form will here suffice. We have seen that in the relation of commodity to commodity, e.g. the relation of boot to boot jack, the use value of the boot jack, that is, the usefulness of its actual thingly properties, is a matter of complete indifference to the boot. The boot jack interests the commodity boot only as a form of appearance of its own value. If commodities could speak, they would say, "Our use value may interest human beings. It does not pertain to us as things. What belongs to us as things is our value. Our own interaction as commodity-things proves this. We relate to each other only as exchange values." Now hear the economist speaking from the soul of a commodity:

Value (exchange value) is a property of things, wealth (use value) of human beings. Value in this sense necessarily includes exchange, wealth does not.[^e29]

Wealth (use value) is an attribute of human beings, value is an attribute of commodities. A human being or a community is rich; a pearl or a diamond is valuable... A pearl or a diamond has value as a pearl or a diamond.[^e30]

So far, no chemist has discovered exchange value in pearls or diamonds. But our writers, who make a special claim to critical depth, find that the use value of thing_s is independent of their thing_ly properties, whereas their exchange value belongs to them as thing_s. What confirms them in this judgment is the peculiar circumstance that the use value of things is realized for human beings outside of exchange - that is, in the immediate relationship between thing and human being - whereas their value is realized only in exchange, that is, in a social process. Who does not remember here the good Dogberry, who instructs the night watchman Seacoal:

To be a well-favored man is the gift of fortune, but to write and read comes by nature.[^e31].

The commodity is the immediate unity of use value and exchange value, that is, of two opposites. It is therefore an immediate contradiction. This contradiction must develop as soon as the commodity is no longer considered analytically (as has been the case up to now, sometimes from the point of view of use value, sometimes from the point of view of exchange value) but when it is related actually to other commodities as a whole. The actual relationship of commodities to one another, however, is their exchange process.

[^e1]:   Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. London 1859, p. 4.

[^e2]:  "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 on coining the new money lighter, in answer to Mr. Locke's Considerations etc. London 1696, p. 2,3.

[^e3]:  "Things have an intrinsic vertue (this is Barbon's specific term for use value), which in all places have the same vertue; as the loadstone to attract iron" (l. c. p. 16). The property of the magnet to attract iron only became useful once magnetic polarity had been discovered by means of it.

[^e4]:  "The natural worth of anything consists in its fitness to supply the necessities, or serve the conveniences of human life." (John Locke, Some Considerations on the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest. 1691 in Works edit. Lond. 1777 V. II p. 28). In the 17th century we still frequently find "worth" for use value and "value" for exchange value in English writers, quite in the spirit of a language that loves to express the immediate thing in Germanic terms and the reflected thing in Romance.

[^e5]:  In bourgeois society, the fictio juris prevails that every human being, as a buyer of commodities, possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of commodities.

[^e6]:   "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 ratio which exists between one thing and another, between one measure of production and another."] Le Trosne: De L'Intérêt Social. in Physiocrates ed. Daire. Paris 1846. p. 889.

[^e7]:  "Nothing can have an intrinsick value" (N. Barbon l.c. p. 16), or as Butler says: "The value of a thing / Is just as much as it will bring."

[^e8]:  "One sort of commodities are as good as another, if the value be equal. There is no difference or distinction in things of equal value ... One hundred pounds worth of lead or iron is of as great a value as one hundred pounds worth of silver and gold." (N. Barbon l. c. pp. 53 and 7.)

[^e9]:  In the future, when we use the word "value" without further determination, it always refers to exchange value.

[^e10]:  "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".[All productions of the same genus properly form only one mass, whose price is determined in general and without regard to particular circumstances.] (Le Trosne l. c. p. 893.)

[^e11]:  K. Marx l.c., p. 6.

[^e12]:  l.c., p. 12, 13 and passim.

[^e13]:  „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 analizando l’idea della riproduzione; e tanto e riproduzione di valore (use value, although Verri himself does not quite know what kind of value he is talking about here in his polemic against the physiocrats) e di richezze se la terra, l'aria e l'acqua ne campi si transmutino in grano, come se colla mano dell' uomo il glutine di un insetto si transmuti in velluto, ovvero alcuni pezzetti di metallo si organizzino a formare una ripetizione". [All the phenomena of the universe, whether they are products of the hand of man, or of the universal laws of physics, give us no idea of actual creation, but only of a modification of matter. To combine and separate are the only elements that human ingenuity finds in analyzing the idea of reproduction; and it is as much a reproduction of value and riches if the earth, air and water in the fields are transmuted into grain, as it is if the hand of man transmutes the excretion of an insect into velvet, or if a few pieces of metal are organized to form a repeating rifle.] (Pietro Verri, Meditazioni sulla Economia Politica (first printed 1773) in the edition of the Italian economists by Custodi, Parte Moderna, t. XV p. 22.)

[^e14]:  Cf. Hegel, Philosophy of Right. Berlin 1840, p. 250, §. 190.

[^e15]:  The reader must note that we do not here speak of the wages or value that the worker receives for (e.g.) a day's labour, but of the commodity value in which his day of labour is objectified. The category of wages does not exist at all at this level (Stufe) of our presentation.

[^e16]:  It is, as it were, the cell form of money, or, as Hegel would say, the in itself of money (das An sich des Geldes).

[^e17]:  The few economists who, like S. Bailey, have occupied themselves with the analysis of the value-form, could not arrive at any result, first, because they confuse the value-form and value, and, secondly, because, under the crude influence of the practical bourgeois, they focus from the outset exclusively on the quantitative determination. "The command of quantity.... constitutes value." (Money and its Vicissitudes. London 1837, p. 11.) The author is S. Bailey.

[^e18]:   One thus speaks of the coatvalue of linen when one speaks of its value in coats, of its grainvalue when one presents it in grain, etc. Each such expression indicates that it is its value that appears in the use values of coats, grain, etc.

[^e18a]:  In a certain respect, it is with the human being as it is with the commodity. Since the human being neither comes into the world with a mirror nor as a Fichtean philosopher: "I am I", he is initially only mirrored in another human being. It is only through relating to the human Paul as his equal that the human Peter relates to himself as a human being. But with that, Paul also figures for Peter, with skin and hair, in his Pauline bodiliness, as form of appearance of the genus human.

[^e19]:  "The concept, which is at first only subjective, proceeds, in accordance with its own activity, without the need for external material or stuff, to objectify itself." Hegel, Encyclopedia Logic §194, first Zusatz.

[^e19a]:  In so far as the preparation of the polish itself is popularly called polishing.

[^e20]:  It is hardly surprising that the economists, wholly under the influence of material interests, overlooked the formal content of the relative value-expression, when, before Hegel, even logicians by profession overlooked the formal content of the paradigms of judgment and inference.

[^e21]:  It is with such determinations of reflection generally a distinctive thing. This human being, for example, is only king because other human beings relate to him as subjects. They conversely believe themselves to be subjects because he is king.

[^e22]:  "The value of any commodity denoting its relation in exchange, we may speak of it as.... cornvalue, clothvalue, according to the commodity with which it is compared; and then 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."["The value of any commodity denoting its relation in exchange to some other commodity, we may speak of it as money-value, 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, Measure and Causes of Value. By the Author of Essays on the Formation etc. of Opinions. London 1825, p. 39). S. Bailey, the author of this anonymous text, which caused quite a stir in England at the time, imagines that by this reference to the motley relative expressions of the same commodity value, he has destroyed any conceptual determination (Begriffsbestimmung, definition) of value. That, despite his own narrow-mindedness, he had probed sore spots in Ricardo's theory was proven by the irritation with which the Ricardian school attacked him, e.g. in the Westminster Review.

[^e23]:  For the small bourgeois, who sees in the form of commodity production the ne plus ultra of human freedom and individual independence, it would, of course, be highly desirable to be relieved at the same time of the abuses bound up with this form, including in particular the non-immediate exchangeability of commodities. The description of this philistine utopia forms Proudhon's socialism, which, as I have shown elsewhere, does not even have the merit of originality, but was developed much better long before him by Bray, Gray and others. This does not prevent such wisdom from running rampant in France today under the name of "science". No school has thrown the word "science" around more than Proudhon's, for "where concepts are lacking, a word presents itself at the right time."

[^e24]:  It is one of the fundamental defects of classical political economy that it never succeeded in finding out from the analysis of the commodity and especially commodity value the form of value that makes it an exchange value. Especially in its best representatives, such as A. Smith and Ricardo, it treats the value-form as something quite indifferent or external to the nature of the commodity itself. The reason for this is not only that their attention is absorbed entirely by the analysis of the magnitude of value. It lies deeper. The value-form of the product of labor is the most abstract, but also the most universal form of the bourgeois mode of production, which is thereby characterized as a particular type of social mode of production and, at the same time, characterized historically. If one therefore takes it for the eternal natural form of social production, then one also necessarily overlooks the specificity of the value-form, and thus the commodity-form, which are more highly developed in the money-form, capital-form, etc. One therefore finds among economists, who absolutely agree on the measure of the value magnitude through labor time, the most motley and contradictory representations of money, i.e., the finished form of the universal equivalent. This becomes strikingly evident, for example, in the treatment of banking, where the commonplace definitions of money are no longer sufficient. In opposition to this, a restored mercantile system arose (Ganilh, etc.), which sees in value only the social form, or rather only its semblance without substance. To make it clear once and for all, by classical political economy I understand all economy that, since W. Petty, investigates the inner nexus (Zusammenhang) of bourgeois relations of production, in opposition to vulgar economy, which moves around the seeming nexus only in order to give a plausible rationalization for what are called the crudest phenomena -- constantly regurgitating, for bourgeois domestic needs, material long since supplied by scientific economy -- and which, for the rest, limits itself to pedantically systematizing, and proclaiming as eternal truths, the banal and complacent representations of the bourgeois agents of production about their own, the best, world.

[^e25]:  One recalls that China and the tables began to dance when all the rest of the world seemed to stand still – to encourage the others.

[^e26]:  "What are we to think of a law that can only be enforced by periodic revolutions? It is precisely a law of nature that is based on the unconsciousness of those affected." (Friedrich Engels, Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, p. 103 in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, edited by Arnold Ruge and Karl Marx. Paris 1849.)

[^e27]:  The inadequacies of Ricardo's analysis of the magnitude of value – and it is the best – will be seen in the third and fourth books of this text. But as far as value as such is concerned, classical political economy nowhere distinguishes explicitly and with clear consciousness between labor as presented in value from the same labor insofar as it is presented in the use value of its product. Of course, political economy does make the distinction in practice, since it regards labor in one case quantitively and in another qualitively. But it does not occur to it that the mere quantitative distinction of labors presupposes their qualitative unity or equality, that is, their reduction to abstract human labor. Ricardo, for example, agrees with Destutt de Tracy when he says: "As it is certain that our physical and moral faculties are alone our original riches, the employment of those faculties, labor of some kind, is our original treasure, and that 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 labor 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 labor from which they emanate." (Ricardo, The Principles of Political Econonomy, 3 ed. Lond. 1821’, p. 334). We only hint that Ricardo imputes his own deeper understanding to Destutt. Destutt does indeed say, on the one hand, that all the things that form wealth "represent the labor that created them," but he also says, on the other hand, that they obtain their "two different values" (use value and exchange value) from the "value of labor." He thus falls into the shallowness of vulgar economy, which presupposes the value of one commodity (here labor) in order to determine the value of the other commodities. Ricardo reads Destutt in such a way that labor (not the value of labor) is presented both in use value and exchange value. But he himself fails to distinguish the double-edged character of labor, which is doubly presented, so that through the whole chapter, 'Value and Riches, Their Distinctive Properties,' he must struggle with the trivialities of a J. B. Say. In the end, he is quite astonished that Destutt agrees with him about labor as a source of value, and yet, on the other hand, with Say about the concept of value.

[^e28]:  „Les économistes ont une singulière manière de procéder. Il n’y a pour eux que deux sortes d’institution, 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 religion. 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." (Karl Marx, Misère de la Philosophie. Response to the Philosophy of Misery by Mr. Proudhon. 1847), p. 113.) [The economists have a peculiar way of proceeding. For them, there are only two kinds of institution, those of art and those of nature. The institutions of feudalism are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural institutions. In this, they resemble theologians, who also establish two kinds of religion. Any religion other than their own is an invention of men, while their own religion is an emanation of God. - Thus there has been history, but there is none any longer.] Mr. Bastiat is truly droll when he imagines that the ancient Greeks and Romans lived only by robbery. If you live by robbery for many centuries, there must always be something to rob, or the object of robbery must constantly reproduce itself. It would therefore appear that the Greeks and Romans also had a production process, and thus an economy, which formed the material basis of their world, just as the bourgeois economy does for today's world. Or does Bastiat mean that a mode of production based on slave labor rests on a system of robbery? If so, he is treading on dangerous ground. If a giant of thought like Aristotle erred in his appreciation of slave labor, why should a dwarf economist like Bastiat be right in his appreciation of wage labor? I take this opportunity to briefly reply to an objection that was raised against my text Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy(1859) by a German-American paper. Of my view: that a determinate mode of production has in each case derminate relations of production corresponding to it; that, in short, "the economic structure of society is the real basis on which a legal and political superstructure rises, and to which certain social forms of consciousness correspond,"; that "the mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and spiritual process of life in general" - it said that this is all true for today's world, where material interests rule, but not for the Middle Ages, where Catholicism ruled, nor for Athens and Rome, where politics ruled. First of all, it is disconcerting that someone would assume that these world-famous sayings about the Middle Ages and the ancient world have remained unknown to anyone. This much is clear: the Middle Ages could not live on Catholicism nor could the ancient world live on politics. It is the other way around: the respective ways and means through which they gained their life is what explains why it was politics here and Catholicism there that played their respective roles. Incidentally, it takes little acquaintance with the history of the Roman Republic, for example, to know that the history of land ownership forms its secret history. On the other hand, Don Quixote had already paid for the error of thinking that knight errantry was equally compatible with all economic forms of society.

[^e29]:  "Value is a property of things, riches of man. Value, in this sense, necessarily implies exchanges, riches do not." Observations on some verbal Disputes in Polical Econonomy, particularly relating to value and to offer and demand. London 1821, p. 16.

[^e30]:  "Riches are the attribute of man, 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 diamond." S. Bailey l. c. p. 165.

[^e31]:  The author of the Observations and S. Bailey accuse Ricardo of having transformed exchange value from something only relative into something absolute. The opposite is the case. Ricardo has reduced the semblance of relativity which these things (e.g. diamond and pearls) possess as exchange values, to the true relation hidden behind the semblance, to their relativity as mere expressions of human labor. The Ricardians responded to Bailey roughly, but without a knock-out -- but only because they did not find in Ricardo himself any explanation of the inner connection between value and exchange value.