1.1 The Two Factors of the Commodity: Use-Value and Value (Substance of Value, Magnitude of Value)

125:1 The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an ‘immense collection of commodities’;

In the first sentence Marx defines the object of analysis. He studies wealth as it appears in capitalist societies. One might object that the wealth of societies actually presents itself as the GDP or as debt or as money or … However, here the starting point is much more simple: people need and want to eat, shelter, tools to fix and produce stuff etc. – this is the material wealth they need in any society. In this society, however, this material wealth appears in commodity form and this particularity is the starting point of the analysis. Hence, when Marx writes “appears” it expresses that the content “wealth” confronts us in a specific mode: as the commodity.

To avoid anticipating the remainder of this chapter, we must for now rely on a superficial dictionary style definition of what we mean when we say “commodity”. In economics, in particular around the time when Marx was writing, a commodity is something which is produced for sale or exchange.¹

This first definition of a commodity points to the attribute of the wealth under consideration here that it needs to be produced. It consists of products of labour. The things people consume are produced first and somehow production is related to consumption: what is produced for whom, who produces it and how. By definition this is a feature of any division of labour. What can change, though, is how this “coordination” is accomplished, the social form.² Or as Marx put it in response to his critics:

“Every child knows that any nation that stopped working, not for a year, but let us say, just for a few weeks, would perish. And every child knows, too, that the amounts of products corresponding to the differing amounts of needs demand differing and quantitatively determined amounts of society’s aggregate labour. It is self-evident that this necessity of the distribution of social labour in specific proportions is certainly not abolished by the specific form of social production; it can only change its form of manifestation. Natural laws cannot be abolished at all. The only thing that can change, under historically differing conditions, is the form in which those laws assert themselves.”³

How these laws assert themselves and what additional laws assert themselves if the wealth of societies appears in commodity form is the subject of this investigation.

Marx’s starting point is rather different from modern economics. The starting point of modern economics is management of scarce resources in general: “Economics … studies the behavior of individuals, households, and organizations …, when they manage or use scarce resources, which have alternative uses, to achieve desired ends.”⁴

1. Marx’s starting point is an immense collection of wealth not scarcity. The fundamental claim of current modern — i.e. neoclassical – economics is scarcity. We pick this up again below.

2. Marx’s starting point is the particularity of the capitalist mode of production. The commodity form is a particular form in which wealth appears and is to be investigated as such: what is the commodity? Modern economics, on the other hand, claims to not to be specific to this society. It claims to study the use of scarce resources in general and posits that the market is the most efficient mechanism for dealing with scarcity. They do not investigate the particular social form that they deal with but posit from the beginning that it is best; they do not study what actually exists but start from a positive verdict which they want to justify. Therewith, these authors miss the observation from which Marx starts.

125:1 the individual commodity appears as its elementary form. Our investigation therefore begins with the analysis of the commodity.

The appearance of wealth in commodity form is the starting point of the analysis, not its end.⁵ With the observation that wealth takes a particular form, we are not done, we are just getting started. Marx’s project is to start from a simple observation and to proceed to the explanation. Marx attempts a systematic development — from elementary to developed — of political economy in capitalism, not just a list of observations.

We should take this project seriously and ask ourselves in every step how (if at all) it followed from the last and should avoid the temptation to use results that we anticipate later in the book to account for a claim made in the beginning. The arguments developed later presuppose the elementary categories and arguments developed in the beginning and cannot be used to explain those elementary arguments in retrospect.

Use-Value

125:1 The commodity is, at first,⁶ an external object, a thing which through its qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind.

Following his predecessors⁷ Marx here clarifies that he means material wealth when he speaks of wealth. He speaks of objects that are useful to us.

There are other things that might come to mind when we think of wealth in general which do not seem to be covered by this definition: “services”. Does a haircut belong here? How about a train ride from Glasgow to London? How about a conversation? These examples are not discussed here. For now, we should think of material objects when Marx talks of the wealth which takes commodity form. Perhaps it is helpful to realise that all these “services” rely on material objects themselves to be performed (scissors, trains, …).

It is useful to think about these “services” in order to gain some clarity what the object under consideration is. It is also useful to distinguish why these “services” do not fall under consideration here. The “service” haircut produces a material result, but maybe not an external object. The “service” legal counselling does not produce such an immediate material result. Marx’s restriction to material objects should be noted and how these different “services” fit into what is being discussed here is a discussion that can and should be had at a later point of the investigation. However, one cannot reject this restriction on the grounds that one can think of other aspects, such as “services”, not being covered.

With “first of all” is expressed that what follows is not the final word on the commodity. At this stage of the argument, we may think of the commodity simply as material wealth, i.e. we may ignore its specific social form as a commodity: it is produced for exchange. This form will be considered in a few paragraphs, but whatever the social form is, it does not mean it is not material wealth.

125:2 The nature of these needs, whether they arise, for example, from the stomach, or the imagination, makes no difference.

Marx states that it does not matter why someone wants something. Important is – for now – only that she wants that thing. He does not make this claim to express a personal preference, taking a position on whether there should be “essential” desires and “artificial” ones. This distinction which many people think about when they think about needs and desires is not what Marx comments on here. Instead, he is concerned with understanding the capitalist mode of production. He observes that on the market it does not make a difference why someone wants a particular commodity. The statement is a scientific statement, not a judgement how something should be.

This indifference towards why someone wants something requires that a certain level of abundance must have been achieved. If the production of food is the foremost question since people just about manage to produce enough in order not to starve, being subject to somebody’s whim would not be the way in which production, distribution and consumption of food would be organised for long. For example, assume that in a given society producers just about manage to produce enough wheat to feed producers for the next year so they can produce wheat and other useful objects for the year after. In this society using wheat to build a flour pool in analogy to Scrooge McDuck’s money pool would undermine the reproduction of the whole society, it would cease to exist. The societies under consideration here are not dominated by nature imposed scarcity, but there is freedom to decide what wealth to produce for what purpose.

125:2 Nor does it matter here how the thing satisfies man’s need, whether directly as a means of subsistence, i.e. an object of consumption, or indirectly as a means of production.

Useful objects can be used in individual consumption, where they are consumed and that’s it. They can also be used in productive consumption where they are used as means to produce other useful objects. For example, wood is chopped and either used to heat a home or used to make a chair. So this “coordination” of production and consumption does not only relate production to consumption in the sense that stuff that is consumed must be produced. It also relates production to its own means: for production the means of production must be produced first.

125:3 Every useful thing, for example, iron, paper, etc., may be looked at from the two points of view of quality and quantity.

A particular thing satisfies a particular need, not any need. If I’m hungry, I want ice cream not chairs. From this perspective things are not interchangeable, they are of different qualities. When Marx writes “quality” he does not mean “good” and “bad quality”, but quality as in particular properties.

Also, I do not want ice cream as such but some specific quantity of ice cream. These statements will be explained more below.

125:3 Every useful thing is a whole composed of many properties; it can therefore be useful in various ways. The discovery of these ways and hence of the manifold uses of things is the work of history.

“Usefulness” is an expression of a relation between someone’s desire or need and the physical properties of some external object. Discovering applications for things is a historical process. For example, this means discovering that magnets can be used to point north. But this also means to discover that wood can be turned into paper which then satisfies an entirely different need than wood. By “work of history” is expressed that this knowledge must be acquired once and can then be passed on to others, who do not have to rediscover it independently for themselves.

125:3 So also is the invention of socially recognized standards of measurement for the quantities of these useful objects. The diversity of the measure for commodities arises in part from the diverse nature of the objects to be measured, and in part from convention.

We count things in particular ways according to their qualities. For example, we usually do not count chairs in weight but simply number them when we are concerned with their usefulness for sitting on them. We count flour in weight, we might count water sometimes in weight and sometimes in volume, depending on how we look at it. Sometimes the choice of quantifying in volume instead of weight comes down to convention. Always down to convention is how we express length, weight etc. If we use the metric system or imperial is a question of convention.

Overall, we do not say 12 water but 12 litres or 12 kilograms of water, but we do say 12 chairs, because chairs are of such a quality that this makes sense. Even how we quantify different things (chairs, wheat) differs between them (weight, lengths, counting, volume).

126:1 The usefulness of a thing makes it a use-value. But this usefulness does not dangle in mid-air. It is conditioned by the physical properties of the commodity, and has no existence apart from the latter. It is therefore the physical body of the commodity itself, for instance iron, corn, a diamond, which is the use-value or useful thing.

A thing is useful because of its physical properties: the relation between me and the thing requires specific properties in the thing. Things must be organic to be edible for example. It might be a human activity that discovers that certain mushrooms are edible, but it is their physical properties which allows to discover this. Mushrooms have the capacity to be edible because of their particular physical, chemical, etc. properties. All possible uses have the physical properties in common: “One and the same use-value can be used in various ways. But the extent of its possible application is limited by its existence as an object with distinct properties.”⁸ Usefulness is grounded in particular qualities of a thing and these qualities make it a useful thing.⁹ Marx here defines “useful thing” and “use-value” as synonyms.

126:1 This property of a commodity is independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities.

Earlier, we determined material wealth as useful objects. These are produced, i.e. products of labour. However, considered purely as a useful object the amount of labour required to produce them is irrelevant. A piece of wood I found on the street is as useful as a piece of wood for which I had to chop a tree. When we find faster ways of producing coats, we can produce more coats in the same time. Yet, a coat still keeps you warm the same. Use-value is a category of consumption, not of production.

126:1 When examining use-values, we always assume we are dealing with definite quantities, such as dozens of watches, yards of linen, or tons of iron.

To realise the qualities of use-values a certain quantity is necessary and sufficient: With one grain of wheat I cannot eat my fill. For a two person household usually one fridge is sufficient, four are usually too many for this purpose. To make use of a certain quality it needs to be available in a certain quantity. One brick is not enough to build a house, 1 billion is too many. Put differently, to build a house one does not want bricks, many bricks or more bricks. One wants however many bricks it takes to build a house: definitely a definite quantity.

Even if we do not know much many bricks it takes to build a house or how much pasta it takes to fill us up, the actual task itself determines this quantity. Our ignorance does not change this.

This observation stands in contrast to the central category of modern economics, scarcity as such. Scarcity — “there is not enough” — is a relation of how much stuff there is vs. how much someone wants for some purpose; scarcity is a category of a relation between stuff and need. It does not make sense to say there is not enough coffee, but we have to say “not enough for what?”. In the same way, we need a certain amount of bricks to build a house, not just bricks or many bricks. Bricks are no scarce or plentiful in general, but in relation to whatever we want to do with them.

Yet, in modern economics stuff is defined as scarce regardless of the need that confronts it. Consequently, when these economists start with scarcity they do not consider the actual shortcomings around them or even rack their brains how to overcome them, e.g. “there aren’t enough iPods so we can all listen to Sting at the same time, how do we make more?” Instead, they simply require and posit scarcity as such as the first category of their economics. Because of this notion of scarcity, they also completely disregard production to make their case. Of course, there are things of which there is only a limited supply. But of many things more can be produced and this fact is disregarded in modern economics when scarcity as such is assumed. For example, a popular example is beach-front homes, i.e. something which is thought of as limited by its location, it is thought that you cannot make more. Another common example is that in a dessert a glass of water would be a lot more valuable than in modern London. In a dessert somebody would give everything for a glass of water because it is so scarce, you cannot make more. However, the object of investigation is the capitalist mode of production with its “immense collection of commodities” on the market and not a single exchange relation in a dessert where there is no market and no production for the market. Under capitalism no need is not fulfilled just because something is scarce per se. If I own enough to exchange I can fly to space or own as many beach front homes and glasses of water as I want. Modern economics investigates and advertises a particular way of organising production and consumption – i.e. the capitalist mode of production – and starts off with disregarding production to introduce its first premise: scarcity.

126:1 The use-values of commodities provide the material for a special branch of knowledge, namely the commercial knowledge of commodities.

Studying all the various use-values is of practical importance, even economically. However, this is a separate body of knowledge from understanding the commodity.

126:1 Use-values are only realized in use or in consumption.

Use-values realise their potential to satisfy human needs when they are consumed. The realisation of use-values also extinguishes them. This is palpable when we consider things like food or petrol, which are immediately extinguished when we consume them. Other objects are not immediately extinguished when we consume them, but they wear out more slowly, they die a slow death so to speak. Hence, there is a continuous need to produce and reproduce stuff under all social organisations of production and consumption.¹⁰

Exchange Value

126:1 They constitute the material content of wealth, whatever its social form may be. In the form of society to be considered here they are also the material bearers of … exchange-value.

Recall that in the first sentence the object of the investigation was defined as the particular form of wealth as it appears in capitalist societies. We then moved on to studying the content of this wealth, the commodity’s body considered as a useful object. But it is their commodity form which is specific to the capitalist mode of production. Consequently, the use-value side or usefulness is not how to proceed. While use-values will play a role later during the investigation, we cannot derive the particularity of the commodity from use-value. Material wealth consists of useful objects without appearing in commodity form.

In all societies people need to eat and in all possible social organisations people need to work to produce the stuff to consume. This cannot change, as pointed out above. What can change, however, is the social form in which consumption is related to production. One such form is the market which makes exchange-value a particular social quality of wealth in societies where the capitalist mode of production prevails.

126:2 Exchange-value appears first of all as the quantitative relation, the proportion, in which use-values of one kind exchange for use-values of another kind.

For now, exchange-value appears as a relation between two use-values. If one can get two chairs for one ton of apples, then two chairs are the exchange-value of one ton of apples. By “one kind” is expressed that the next ton of apples also gets two chairs — if the apples are of the same kind. Exchange-value is not a property of a particular batch of apples, but every ton of apples has this property.

With “relation” is expressed that not only one ton gives access to two chairs but that e.g. two tons grant access to four chairs. Exchangeability is not bound to one ton. This might seem trivial and self-evident but it is not: one could say, for example, we want everybody to be able to get chairs, so as you buy more and more chairs they become more and more expensive (measured in apples) or, alternatively, one cannot even buy more than two chairs, full stop. But this is clearly not how this society exchanges. From this we might conclude that in this society it is a quality of apples to be exchangeable for chairs.

If one takes this standpoint and considers exchange-value as a property of the commodity (an assumption which will be corrected in the following) then apples are determined “exchangeable for chairs” which we might also express as “means to access chairs” or “chair access resources”. While the use-value of apples is their quality to satisfy hunger and appetite, exchange-value — as far as we have determined it so far – as a property of apples means one can get access to chairs with them.

126:2 This relation changes constantly with time and place. Hence exchange-value that is inseparably connected with the commodity, inherent in it, seems a contradiction in terms. Let us consider the matter more closely.

A year ago one ton of apples might have allowed to get three chairs. In Birmingham this might still be the case, while in London one only gets two. In one street apples might exchange for different quantities of chairs. Perhaps even the same apple owner negotiates different “chair prices” for her apples with different people. In light of these variations one could, when asking how come that apples have the power to access chairs, conclude that this was indeed not a potential of the apples. One could say as Butler in footnote 7: “The value of a thing Is just as much as it will bring.” This way, the explanation of commodities as means of exchange would cease before it really started: all random. Or one says that it is not random but essentially determined by the appreciation of the persons involved in the trade. Then exchange-value would depend on the various needs and desires of people and it would be wrong to say that every apple has the same exchange-value. One would have to say: every apple has all kinds of different exchange-values, depending on who has the apple. One also could not talk about relations: if one ton of apples fetches two chairs, this would not mean that two tons result in four chairs. To claim that the exchange-value was grounded in the apple being an apple independent of the subjective appreciation by the exchangers, that would be the position of an “objective theory of value”. The other standpoint would be that of the “subjective theory of value”, which makes up the modern mainstream in economics. It considers the objective theory of value to be absurd by the arguments listed above. However, these arguments deserve scrutiny:

Alternative transition. The transition by Marx here has the form: “What we are looking at – exchange-value – looks accidental, but as we shall see shortly, it is not.” An alternative, and perhaps neater, way of phrasing this would be to note that (a) exchange-value does appear as the property of a commodity and (b) exchange-value does not appear as the property of a commodity. Both cannot be true at the same time, so we have a contradiction in how exchange-value appears to us. This then forces us to “consider the matter more closely”. We discussed the observation (b) above. On (a), when Marx writes that exchange value appears as “the quantitative relation” (and not, say, as a bunch of quantitative relations) of a given commodity type and another, he appeals to the observation that commodities indeed seem to have an exchange-value, they do not exchange in random quantitative relations. For example, fluctuating or not, one litre of milk does not exchange for a racing car.

127:1 A given commodity, a quarter of wheat for example, is exchanged for $x$ boot-polish, $y$ silk or $z$ gold, etc. In short, it is exchanged for other commodities in the most diverse proportions. Therefore the wheat has many exchange values instead of one. But $x$ boot-polish, $y$ silk or $z$ gold, etc., each represent the exchange-value of one quarter of wheat. Therefore $x$ boot-polish, $y$ silk, $z$ gold, etc., must, as exchange-values, be mutually replaceable or of identical magnitude. It follows from this that, firstly, the valid exchange-values of a particular commodity express something equal, and secondly, exchange-value cannot be anything other than the mode of expression, the ‘form of appearance’, of a content distinguishable from it.

A commodity does not only exchange for one particular other commodity, but for many. That means it does not only have one exchange-value but many, in various relations. The apple is not only a “chair access resource” or is not only “means of access to chairs” but also a “boot-polish access resource”, a “silk access resource” etc. “Many exchange values” here means: apples are access resources to any other use-value in this society which is available on the market.

This “content distinguishable from it” that all these exchange-values express is “exchangeability as such” as a property of the apple. Apple owners can access all material wealth that is available as a commodity in this society. Apples have the characteristic that they are access resources to social wealth in a capitalist economy, where social wealth means material wealth that is available in society, i.e. on the market. This “exchangeability as such” is somehow quantified. That is, how much access to social wealth apples grant is a question of how many apples we have. That one can use apples to access chairs is then only an expression of the more general quality of apples to access anything. All those different exchange-values point to the same quality of the apple: apples do not have chairs as exchange-value because apples are access resources to chairs, but because they are means of access sans phrase.

On the other hand, the “valid exchange-values of a particular commodity express something equal” namely that for apples they all count as representatives of social wealth. Considered as exchange-values all commodities only count as particular instances of social wealth as such, they are all the same. This is a statement about all exchange-values of the apple, about boot-polish, silk, gold etc.: they are as exchange-values of the apple “mutually replaceable”.

An analogy: say Elizabeth is in a position of authority towards Alice. We could say that this is due to the special relation between Elizabeth and Alice or by chance. However, let’s say Elizabeth is also in a position of authority towards Bob, Charley, Eve. In fact, let’s assume Elizabeth is in a position of authority towards everybody else. Each of these particular relations of command and servitude are merely particular modes of expression of Elizabeth’s power to rule. At the same time Alice, Bob, Charley, Eve, etc. are all mutually replaceable insofar they are all Elizabeth’s subjects and count as particular expressions of this in their relation to Elizabeth.

Relative to those arguments above against the objective theory of value, we hence have to say: while the definite proportions and quantities might change, what remains is the quality of apples to access chairs. Furthermore, the relations between apples and other commodities might change as well, but what remains is the quality of apples to be exchangeable for them. Quantitatively a lot might change, but the quality of the apple to be exchangeable for or to grant access to any part of social wealth (given enough apples) remains. What is it about the apple that allows this?

Value

127:2 Let us now take two commodities, for example corn and iron. Whatever their exchange relation may be, it can always be represented by an equation in which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of iron, for instance 1 quarter of corn = $x$ cwt of iron. What does this equation signify? It signifies that a common element of identical magnitude exists in two different things, in 1 quarter of corn and similarly in $x$ cwt of iron. Both are therefore equal to a third thing, which in itself is neither the one nor the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchange-value, must therefore be reducible to this third thing.

127:3 A simple geometrical example will illustrate this. In order to determine and compare the areas of all rectilinear figures we split them up into triangles. Then the triangle itself is reduced to an expression totally diferent from 1ts visible shape: half the product of the base and the altitude. In the same way the exchange values of commodities must be reduced to a common element, of which they represent a greater or a lesser quantity.

If a ton of apples gives access to two chairs, then it is also true that two chairs allow one to get one ton of apples, this is just the perspective reversed. All the arguments in the last paragraph also apply to chairs. Chairs are not only exchangeable for apples, because they are apple access resources but because they generally have the quality of quantified exchangeability. Chairs, too, are means of access to the wealth in this society.

This is where the analogy from the last paragraph stops working. In that analogy Elizabeth was not Alice’s ruler because she was Alice’s equal, on the contrary. In contrast to this, commodities are not in a one-directional relationship of access but relate to each other as equal. In the last paragraph, a result was that all exchange-values of the wheat are mutually replaceable as exchange-values — they are equal. Now, the result is that the wheat and any of its exchange-values is also equal.

In exchange, the chair accesses our apples as representatives of social wealth, too. This answers the question of what gives our apples the power to be exchangeable for any other bit of social wealth: they are a bit of social wealth themselves. Apples are means of access to a bit of social wealth because they are. Commodity exchange means that any particular bit of social wealth confronts the rest of social wealth as a greater or lesser quantity of social wealth as such.

The third thing which is neither apples nor chairs, but contained in both of them is that they are quantities of social wealth sans phrase. What is this social wealth in general?

Substance of Value

127:4 This common element cannot be a geometrical, physical, chemical or other natural property of commodities. Such properties come into consideration only to the extent that they make the commodities useful, i.e. turn them into use-values. But clearly, the exchange relation of commodities is characterized precisely by its abstraction from their use-values. Within the exchange relation, one use-value is worth just as much as another, provided only that it is present in the appropriate quantity. Or, as old Barbon says: ‘One sort of wares 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.’

128:1 As use-values, commodities differ above all in quality, while as exchange-values they can only differ in quantity, and therefore do not contain an atom of use-value.

Determined as social wealth as such the particular qualities of commodities as apples, chairs, iron, corn do not matter, given the right quantity they are all the same. Exchange-value is not only a disregard of a particular quality of commodities, exchange-value expresses the disregard of any quality of the use-value: “precisely by its abstraction”. The only difference they are capable of as social wealth as such is that of magnitude. The key point is not that they might differ in quantity, but that they cannot differ in quality.

We are looking for a common basis which characterises a commodity as social wealth as such which in turn grounds its capacity to access social wealth in the hands of others. From this it should be clear that our search for the “third thing” is not one of the kind: what kind of things can I think of that they might have in common. If that was the case, we could arrive at the conclusion that all things have a mass or have something to do with particles or so. Conclusions we could then try to disprove by finding counter examples. Yet, this does not explain their quality “to give access to social wealth because they are”, these commonalities, if they exist, do not explain what goes on when a society exchanges its products of labour and therewith equates them.

Every commodity needs a use-value. Only when there is need in society for a thing, it may be used to attract the interest of other members of society. However, the usefulness of a thing cannot be quantified. If I want to sit down on a table with five people then I need a table and five chairs. Four chairs do not satisfy this need, six chairs do not offer more usefulness for this purpose than five. The standpoint “at least I have three chairs, then only two people need to sit on the floor” is an expression of managing scarcity and not an expression that five chairs satisfy a need better than three. Five satisfy my need, three do not. More generally, if we compare the usefulness of different use-values then the statement that a bicycle would be more useful than lunch is pretty absurd. If I am hungry a bicycle does not help, if I want to get from A to B lunch is of no help.

However, for many people these alternatives, comparisons and quantifications appear as rather straight-forward. They think about their day-to-day life and there such questions appear quite often … due to limited spending power: “Do I treat myself to a good meal and don’t go to the pub or vice versa?” However, when asking this question we already compare the amount of our money with the price of the two things we would enjoy doing. We come to the conclusion that these magnitudes do not match up and hence we have to limit ourselves. Only after we compared the respective magnitudes we arrive at limiting our needs and desires. Only after this step we make the forced upon ourselves comparison: what can I do without. This way the daily struggle appears as if the exchange relations were determined by use-values or our own individual needs and desires.

Two comparisons between use-values are sensible, but have nothing to do with the question considered here. Firstly, I can compare a use-value in relation to a particular need. If I want to drink a hot drink, a cup might be more useful than a glass. A bicycle, however, certainly does not come to mind. Secondly, I can ask myself whether remodelling my room is worth the effort if it takes up so much time and energy that afterwards I do not have time to enjoy my remodelled room. The effort puts the benefit so much into question that I rather not have the benefit. This relates effort to benefit for a particular useful thing, but certainly does not relate different useful things.

From the perspective of the commodity seller, usefulness is definitely not what founds exchangeability. She does not want to use the commodity but exchange it. For her it does not have any usefulness at all. The owners of the BMW company may want drive, say, 10 cars themselves, the remaining thousands of cars which are produced every day are certainly not useful to them. For those who want to have one of those BMWs it too cannot be irrelevant how many apples they have to give up in exchange for it. One could say, well those apples do not have use-value for them, so it does not matter how many they have to give up, they get what they really want. Because access to use-values in this society is dependent on how much I own, use-value only plays the part that it must exist in exchange; the exchangers confront each other on the exchange-value side. Because everybody does it, an individual decision also does not play a big role. I have to take other exchange relations into account and take part. By taking part I contribute myself that others too cannot act accordingly to their individual preferences.

Finally, that the particular use-values are not the point when we are considering the exchange-value side of commodities is illustrated by the fact that any use-value — if there is demand for it in society — enables us to exchange it for all other things in society if we own them. Producing gold, fertilisers or toilets, all these things do not differ qualitatively as to what wealth I can get access to. If I have enough, I can exchange them for what I need and desire, because they are social wealth themselves.

Labour

128:2 If then we disregard the use-value of commodities, only one property remains, that of being products of labour.

We are searching for an answer to the question what it means to speak of social wealth as such in disregard of its particular qualities as particular useful objects. What does it mean to speak of an apple as a bit of social wealth as such, in abstraction from its apple-ness as a foundation for the apple’s capacity to access any social wealth? We are seeeking to express in what sense all these products of labour are equal, just undifferentiated more or lesser parts of total social wealth; to express what their “common social substance”¹¹ is.

The common social substance which characterises products of labour as part of the division of labour of society is, well, that they are products of labour. For material wealth to be part of society’s wealth it must be produced first, it does not fall from the sky but requires effort. In that regard they are all equal and, in particular, in this regard they all constitute a part of the total product of society.

There are many things which are not products of labour which still can be exchanged. What about those? Virgin soil for example. Marx deals with virgin soil and the laws governing its exchange in Volume 3. For now, we can say: for the things we need to live, things which require no labour at all, are the exception.¹² Marx will pick this up again briefly at the end of this sub-chapter.

We arrived at the conclusion that social wealth as such is somehow related to labour. How?

Abstract Labour

128:2 But even the product of labour has already been transformed in our hands. If we make abstraction from its use-value, we abstract also from the material constituents and forms which make it a use-value. It is no longer a table, a house, a piece of yarn or any other useful thing. All its sensuous characteristics are extinguished. Nor is it any longer the product of the labour of the joiner, the mason or the spinner, or of any other particular kind of productive labour. With the disappearance of the useful character of the products of labour, the useful character of the kinds of labour embodied in them also disappears; this in turn entails the disappearance of the different concrete forms of labour. They can no longer be distinguished, but are all together reduced to the same kind of labour, human labour in the abstract.

By producing a chair, a use-value, carpentering is concrete. By producing a chair which has exchange-value carpentering produces social wealth as such. The chair as social wealth as such is not the chair as the use-value, that’s what makes it special, different from houses and wool. The social-wealth-as-such producing side of house-building does not consist in connecting bricks by cement. The social-wealth-as-such forming side of carpentering, house-building, cheese making is that labour as such was performed.

When producers produce commodities they not only produce particular useful things but also each a bit of social wealth as such. All their labour together in the world of commodities counts as one and the same mass of labour of which each of them produced a part as a particular commodity.

Of course, human labour-power is always expended with a certain form, as such without form it does not exist. Nobody performs abstract human labour as such, one always performs “concrete labour”. Furthermore, one could always take the position to abstract away the concrete sides of spinning, weaving, baking … when considering them and call the result labour as such: purposeful interaction with nature … that is how its talked about later. But that’s not what is meant when we say abstract labour.

The labour that produces social wealth as such is abstract labour. In this society an abstraction which I could make in my head is what becomes the standard which characterise my product as wealth. By treating the products of labour as qualitatively equal the labours that produced them are also treated equal. This abstraction is not something we do as a part of our scientific investigation, but something that the participants on the markets do when they exchange. While this abstraction can in principle always be made it is not a product of labour in itself that this abstraction to pure expenditure becomes the relevant social property of wealth as such; instead, this requires particular social relations in which labour is performed. Put differently, it’s not a quality of labour to produce value but a quality of the market to reduce labour to homogeneous human labour.¹³ The physiological equality of all labour, that there actually is a commonality in labour, is the material basis, the condition, for the social relation of abstract labour, but it is not that social relation itself. The fact that all labours are the expenditure of human labour makes it possible for society to treat all labours as equal, but is by itself not yet this equal treatment.¹⁴

128:3 Let us now look at the residue of the products of labour. There is nothing left of them in each case but the same phantom-like objectivity; they are merely congealed quantities of homogeneous human labour, i.e. of human labour-power expended without regard to the form of its expenditure. All these things now tell us is that human labour-power has been expended to produce them, human labour is accumulated¹⁵ in them. As crystals of this social substance, which is common to them all, they are values – commodity values.

After having discussed social wealth as such for a few paragraphs Marx finally gives it a name: value.

When Marx talks about human labour “expended without regard to the form of its expenditure” then the following is addressed. When the purpose of production is the production of value (which is the purpose of the commodity producer who has no interest in using the commodity himself) then the branch of industry is irrelevant. Whether I am a carpenter, a weaver or a builder is all the same, when the purpose of production is to produce value. When I notice that some branch of industry does not allow me to get hold of as much value as another, I switch branches. Hence, for example, farmers who stick to farming regardless of how much it gains them in terms of value and insist on passing their land to their children, don’t quite fit in the capitalist mode of production. Value-forming labour is indifferent against the preferences for a particular labour (whatever the reason for this preference).

This attains a different harshness when one cannot switch branches. This could be because one does know have the necessary skills or the necessary means of production. The indifference towards the branch of industry as a determination of value-forming labour asserts itself against the producer where she is restricted to one branch. Where people insist on the particular branch or have to stick to it, the producers perish of this demand. Abstract human labour is a determination which asserts itself as purpose and demand against concrete labour.

128:4 We have seen that when commodities are in the relation of exchange, their exchange-value manifests itself as something totally independent of their use-value. But if we abstract from their use-value, there remains their value, as it has just been defined. The common factor in the exchange relation, or in the exchange-value of the commodity, is therefore its value. The progress of the investigation will lead us back to exchange-value as the necessary mode of expression, or form of appearance, of value. For the present, however, we must consider the nature of value independently of its form of appearance.

It is not correct to say that a commodity is a use-value and an exchange-value or even to say it has one exchange-value. Instead, a commodity is a use-value and is a value of which its various exchange-values (one chair exchanges for $x$ beer, $y$ wines, $z$ cheeses, …) are only expressions.¹⁶

Socially Necessary Labour Time: Magnitude of Value

129:1 A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because abstract human labour is objectified or materialized in it. How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured? By means of the quantity of the ‘value-forming substance’, the labour, contained in the article. This quantity is measured by its duration, and the labour-time is itself measured on the particular scale of hours, days etc.

If the substance of value is abstract human labour, its magnitude is amount of abstract human labour. How do we measure such a magnitude? Marx here measures labour in time to arrive at an expression which quantifies it. Certainly, we can say that working longer means more labour is expended, insofar is time a measure of labour. However, two labour processes could take the same amount of time but be of different intensity. One of them would expend more labour-power in the same time as the other. In this case time would not actually be an adequate measure of amount of labour. This is taken up again later in chapter 15: intensity and time are the two measures of abstract labour. For now, normalising intensity – i.e., treating more intense labour as equivalent to longer less intense labour – we are left with the measure of time.

129:2 It might seem that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour expended to produce it, it would be the more valuable the more unskilful and lazy the worker who produced it, because he would need more time to complete the article. However, the labour that forms the substance of value is equal human labour, the expenditure of identical human labour-power. The total labour-power of society, which is manifested in the values of the world of commodities, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour-power, although composed of innumerable individual units of labour-power. Each of these units is the same as any other, to the extent that it has the character of a socially average unit of labour-power and acts as such, i.e. only needs, in order to produce a commodity, the labour time which is necessary on an average, or in other words is socially necessary. Socially necessary labour-time is the labour-time required to produce any use-value under the conditions of production normal for a given society and with the average degree of skill and intensity of labour prevalent in that society. The introduction of power-looms into England, for example, probably reduced by one half the labour required to convert a given quantity of yarn into woven fabric. In order to do this, the English hand-loom weaver in fact needed the same amount of labour-time as before; but the product of his individual hour of labour now only represented half an hour of social labour, and consequently fell to one half its former value.

A chair producer who needs longer to produce a chair than the next guy does not produce more value with one chair. On the contrary: the value of one chair is the same as the value of another chair, regardless of who produced it and how long she took to do it. This points to the fact that chair maker competes against chair-maker. As values the chairs are treated equal and therefore the labour that produced them is treated equal and equated. In retrospect this means that only that chair-making time counts as value-producing which lives up to this comparison.

When a product of labour contains value and is exchanged on the market, this is not a reward of some sort for labour performed. The actual labour expended on a particular product is not what counts, but only how much time is socially necessary. The commodity in one’s hand functions as lever to gain access to social wealth because it takes effort to produce it, not because you worked hard to produce it. That’s your problem.

If a producer Alice needs a ten hour working day to produce a chair, but on average two chairs are produced in the same time, then Alice’s chairs still have the same value as all the other chairs. That the average counts as value-producing, on the other hand, also applies to the fastest producer. If Bob manages to produce four chairs per day, he produces twice as much value than the average.

This means from a value perspective it makes sense to try harder, to improve one’s skills, to work more intensely and with a higher level of productivity. Only, if everybody does that then the relative advantage is gone. If all improve their performance per time then this new level is the normal, necessary and average. They all wanted to achieve more value per time with their performance but the end result is that they produce just as much value as before the big push for more performance. This will be taken up again later in the part 4.

This also means that somebody who for whatever reasons has physical or intellectual disadvantages is likely to fail on the market. Education, socialisation etc. all have the same effect. That labour which is less efficient because of it, compares less favourably on the market. Put differently: this justice of the market means that those whose physical or intellectual skills are less developed than for others are in a worse position.

The same is true for the means of production. The best physical strength does not mean much if someone else can work twice as fast because of a technological advantage. The question is then whether one can keep up through sheer expenditure of body strength. However, this increased expenditure definitely means the devastation of one’s health, that’s for sure. Value-producing labour is ruthless against the concrete side of labour.

There is a standard of value-producing labour which one has to live up to. How does this standard come about? Through an average of what e.g. chair producers producing for the market need to produce a chair. All of them together form this standard. Every individual, concrete chair making labour enters. On the other hand, every concrete, individual labour time has to related to this standard and is measured against it. This standard confronts each producers as an external fact against which she is powerless. By doing so she contributes to this standard herself.

We need to differentiate between how much one contributes to the standard, though. If only one company owns a technology which allows them to produce much faster than their competitors and hence produces 90% of all commodities sold on the market then this individual contribution has the respective weight when contributing to the average. If this company competes with 1000 independent artisans who produce 10% of the commodities sold on the market, then their individual performance only enters with about that weight.

On the one hand, socially necessary labour means that only that labour-time counts as value-producing which is necessary on average to produce a commodity not how much time was needed to produce it. On the other hand, this expresses that too many commodities can be produced relative to effective demand. This side of socially necessary is discussed in chapter 3.

129:3 What exclusively determines the magnitude of the value of any article is therefore the amount of labour socially necessary, or the labour-time socially necessary for its production. The individual commodity counts here only as an average sample of its kind. Commodities which contain equal quantities of labour, or which can be produced in the same time, have therefore the same value. The value of a commodity is related to the value of any other commodity as the labour-time necessary for the production of the one is related to the labour-time necessary for the production of the other. ‘As exchange-values, all commodities are merely definite quantities of congealed labour-time.’

That the determination of average labour performance asserts itself across branches can be explained as follows. Let the average output of yogurt producer per day be 10 litres of yogurt. Now, a chair producer, say, realises she could produce 20 litres of yogurt per working day. She hence switches branches. This pushes up the average in the production of yogurt. Let’s assume further her market share is small and the average hence remains relatively low, i.e., the increase is hardly noticeable and 10 litres of yogurt have the same value as 2 chairs. Our skilled branch switcher hence produced twice as much value as before when producing chairs. Other producers from other industries will notice this: if they switch to yogurt they can produce much more value in a day than if they stick with chairs or whatever they are making. More and more will switch to yogurt and role up the market: the average increases. The eventual result will be that 20 litres of yogurt will be the average output of one day of yogurt production. Now, if the chair production did not change, 20 litres of yogurt are now worth as much as 2 chairs.

The indifference towards the particular branch of industry, which is in the concept of abstract human labour, hence is presupposed here. Labour is thrown where it is worthwhile. This way, the determination of socially necessary labour-time asserts itself across branches.

130:1 The value of a commodity would therefore remain constant, if the labour-time required for its production also remained constant. But the latter changes with every variation in the productivity of labour. This is determined by a wide range of circumstances; it is determined amongst other things by the workers’ average degree of skill, the level of development of science and its technological application, the social organization of the process of production, the extent and effectiveness of the means of production, and the conditions found in the natural environment. For example, the same quantity of labour is present in eight bushels of corn in favourable seasons and in only four bushels in unfavourable seasons. The same quantity of labour provides more metal in rich mines than in poor. Diamonds are of very rare occurrence on the earth’s surface, and hence their discovery costs, on an average, a great deal of labour-time. Consequently much labour is represented in a small volume. Jacob questions whether gold has ever been paid for at its full value. This applies still more to diamonds. According to Eschwege, the total produce of the Brazilian diamond mines for the eighty years ending in 1823 still did not amount to the price of 1 1/2 years’ average produce of the sugar and coffee plantations of the same country,† although the diamonds represented much more labour, therefore more value. With richer mines, the same quantity of labour would be embodied in more diamonds, and their value would fall. If man succeeded, without much labour, in transforming carbon into diamonds, their value might fall below that of bricks. In general, the greater the productivity of labour, the less the labour-time required to produce an article, the less the mass of labour crystallized in that article, and the less its value. Inversely, the less the productivity of labour, the greater the labour-time necessary to produce an article, and the greater its value. The value of a commodity, therefore, varies directly as the quantity, and inversely as the productivity, of the labour which finds its realization within the commodity.

The productivity of labour is a determination of concrete, useful labour. It expresses efficiency by stating how many goods can be produced per time. The more skillful a labourer the more goods she can produce per hour. Using the right tools – means of production – one can increase the productivity of labour enormously. Using a wedge can increase how much one can lift, using a basket allows one to transport a lot more stuff than not using one. Nature, too, can play a decisive role. The same amount of labour may produce a lot less potatoes given bad weather conditions than given good conditions. If one is drilling for oil it makes a huge difference whether one hits it after 50m or 1500m, the latter requires a lot more work.¹⁷

Because productivity is a quality of concrete, useful labour it does not enter the magnitude of value side. While an edge in productivity is beneficial for a producer because her commodities are measured by the average, this advantage is gone as soon as the competition catches up. More commodities are produced per day but not more value than before. The value of a single commodity decreases, because the measure of value is socially necessary labour-time.

From the standpoint of use-value and from the standpoint satisfaction of needs and desires one can say: the faster a use-value can be produced the more goods can be produced per day, the more people in need of that good can be provided for. Or: if everybody is provided for we can work less if we are able to work faster. Advances in productivity would enable more spare time.

From the standpoint of value this advance in productivity is of no benefit as soon as it becomes the normal way of producing things. The mass of value that is produced in a day simply remains the same. If value is concerned an increase in productivity is no reason to work less. Spare time which one can enjoy is not part of the programme of value. Value does not service the labourer, but the labourer has to service value, has to act in accordance to its demands.¹⁸

So congealed abstract labour as the substance of value and socially necessary labour-time as the measure of value isn’t just another way of saying that people produce stuff. These are statements how they produce. More precisely how they confront each other in this society and what that means for the labour they perform. Abstract labour is performed where commodities are produced. On the other hand, abstract labour does not mean nothing, i.e., one could be tempted to think that if abstract labour is something specific to this society it would have nothing to do with labour as performed under all kinds of different social conditions. A reading, which is perhaps aimed against a reading of abstract labour by Leninists who think of it as a condition of human existence, holds that abstract labour has no physiological side to it, that would be a naturalistic reading. Hence, one doesn’t know much more about value by reducing it to abstract labour: one fairly empty social category is reduced to another. A meaningless reduction, one could drop the mention of “labour” from “abstract labour” and one is not any further in one’s analysis than before the reduction. Yet, it is one thing to explain that the physiological equality, i.e., that people do stuff, does not constitute value, it is another thing to claim value would have nothing to do with it. What is lost in this abstract account are the results about what abstract labour as a social rule does to concrete labour. That is, this way the critique of abstract labour is lost, i.e., the account what it does to concrete labour and the immediate producers if pure expenditure of labour-power, pure toil, something purely negative is what counts. Abstract labour asserts itself against the immediate producers because it turns a physiological quality of their activity against them, reduces their activity to it.

Marx’ comment that diamonds probably never have been paid for at their full value, is quite confusing. After spending so much time on deriving value and abstract labour as the substance of it, he comes out and says that commodities do not necessarily fetch their value on the market. Put differently, the price of a commodity (which will be discussed on sub-chapter) is not necessarily quantitatively the same as its value. How this works is only fully explained in volume 3. However, for most of what follows Marx makes the simplifying assumption that things are bought and sold at their value.

131:0 (Now we know the substance of value. It is labour. We know the measure of its magnitude. It is labour-time. The form, which stamps value as exchange-value, remains to be analysed. But before this we need to develop the characteristics we have already found somewhat more fully.)

We have established that on the market the products of labour confront each other as social wealth as such, they are reduced to the effort it takes to produce them. This effort, which is stripped of its content, is measured in time. But note that labour is not value.

David Harvey writes: “This allows him to formulate the crucial definition of ‘value’ as ‘socially necessary labour-time;’ which ‘is the labour-time required to produce any use-value under the conditions of production normal for a given society and with the average degree of skill and intensity of labour prevalent in that society:’ He concludes, ‘What exclusively determines the magnitude of the value of any article is therefore the amount of labour socially necessary, or the labour-time socially necessary for its production’ (129). There is your definition.”¹⁹

This is not what Marx says nor is it correct. Socially necessary labour-time is the measure of the magnitude of value, it is neither its substance nor is it value. Value is the quality of commodities to command social wealth because they are. What gives them this quality is that it takes effort to produce them. Socially necessary labour-time measures this effort. This is pointed out here because this identification of Harvey (and others) lends itself to missing the point of this first sub-chapter: the crucial bit is not that value is somehow related to labour but the social relations that arise when labour is performed in private and related through exchange. Only then the products of labour become leverage against other producers and the labour needed to produce them becomes that what exclusively counts.²⁰

131:1 A thing can be a use-value without being a value. This is the case whenever its utility to man is not mediated through labour. Air, virgin soil, natural meadows, unplanted forests, etc. fall into this category. A thing can be useful, and a product of human labour, without being a commodity. He who satisfies his own need with the product of his own labour admittedly creates use-values, but not commodities. In order to produce the latter, he must not only produce use-values, but use-values for others, social use-values. (And not merely for others. The medieval peasant produced a corn-rent for the feudal lord and a corn-tithe for the priest; but neither the corn-rent nor the corn-tithe became commodities simply by being produced for others. In order to become a commodity, the product must be transferred to the other person, for whom it serves as a use-value, through the medium of exchange.)† Finally, nothing can be a value without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.

The condition for a product of labour to be a commodity and to be value is to be useful to others, but not only useful to others in some way, but useful to others who can and do recognise it as a bit social wealth as such in exchange. Only products of private producers who produce for exchange confront each other as value-determined commodities. Things which are not produced for exchange do not have value and neither do things which are not products of labour but are exchanged on the market.

1.2 The Dual Character of the labour embodied in the Commodities

131:2 Initially the commodity appeared to us as an object with a dual character, possessing both use-value and exchange-value. Later on it was seen that labour, too, has a dual character: in so far as it finds its expression in value, it no longer possesses the same characteristics as when it is the creator of use-values.

Private Labour and Social Division of Labour

The social division of labour is a determination of concrete, useful labour. Some produce food, which feeds others who produce means of production which are used by the food producers to produce food etc. Insofar the producers do not only produce for themselves every society has a division of labour. In factories too we find a division of labour. One person has to check the temperature of the milk while another person has to feed milk bottles to the bottling machine while another person has to take the completed bottles out of the machine. All these activities for themselves are useless, only their combination produces useful things and hence prepares the being of these things as commodities. In a factory the partial labours are coordinated and the final purpose of labour is known in the head of the foreman a priori and in accordance with this purpose labour is divided up into tasks and related. Yet, in a factory workers do not exchange intermediate products, they are not commodities.

132:4 Only the products of mutually independent self-directed private labors face each other as commodities.²¹

In capitalist societies, too, labours depend on each other. Intermediate products, like windscreen wipers and tyres are offered as commodities and Volkswagen and Crysler get their hands on these intermediate products through exchange so they can put together complete cars. Here, too, it seems we find a form of division of labour. Windscreen makers would be out of business if it was not for others who produce cars. Only together in combination can windscreen wiper makers and car makers produce a final car. At the same time, these labour processes are private labours. What somebody produces is subject to her whims, subjectivity and freedom, no one else has a say in this. Afterwards a kind of division of labour appears, but the path towards it is based on the separation of the labour process. Afterwards we can see that labour was divided up, but this division of labour was not directed in accordance with the result. Everybody gets busy himself and what the outcome of this activity is presents itself afterwards. In contrast to the division of labour in factories the division of labour in capitalist societies does not follow a plan.

132:3 Coats cannot be exchanged for coats.

because the basis for exchange is the neediness of the other. If she already has a coat why should she be interested in coat in the hands of others. The separation from the things they need is the basis of commodity production.

The sense of division of labour in commodity production is then that the division of labour in the form of private labours is not a relation of complementation, but a relation of dependencies which one has to satisfy and which one wants to exploit. Everybody produces in a speculative way: what is needed by those in society who have the means to exchange? Whether it is needed, nobody knows a priori. Even if during the last few years a particular product was needed, it is not clear whether now the competition wipes one off the market or whether the intermediate product one produces became redundant because of technical advances elsewhere.

If one produces something that others indeed need who own a value equivalent, then the task is to exploit this dependency and to get as much as possible. This, all producers do reciprocally, such that a standard develops to which every single one contributes but no single one controls. This standard is: value-producing labour is such, which retrospectively was proven to be part of social labour through the process of competition.

Development of the Social Division of Labour

132:5 In a society in which products generally take the form of commodities, i.e., in a society of commodity producers, this qualitative difference between the useful labors that are carried on independently from each other as the private businesses of self-directed producers, develops into a system with many components, a social division of labor.²²

In capitalist societies there doesn’t simply exist a social division of labour, it develops constantly with a tendency to smaller and smaller intermediate products. Factories are put up that only produce containers for certain acids used in the chemical industry and another factory only produces screws for these containers. This is not simply the course of human history but specific to this mode or production. The basis for specialisation in capitalism is the interest of commodity producers in advances in productivity of labour, because that is advantageous value-wise. While this advantage lasts only temporarily, it is a permanent motivator.

The development of the social division of labour or specialisation of labours is based on exploiting this interest in a competitive advantage. The tyre company Conti makes BMW the offer: you can produce your own tyres or your can rely on me as a specialist which means your tyres are produced faster (and cheaper) which gives you an advantage in competition with Volkswagen. The same offer is made to Volkswagen such that no company in the car industry might have an advantage, but no participant can afford not to accept the offer.

The development of the social division of labour in capitalism is founded in producing and exploiting dependencies for value.

Simple and Complicated Labour

134:2 Moreover, we see at a glance that, in our capitalist society, a given portion of human labor is, in accordance with the varying demand, at one time supplied in the form of spinning, and at another in the form of weaving. This change may not always take place without friction, but take place it must.

That sometimes more tailoring is required, sometimes less, sometimes more house building, sometimes less, is not only a fact but from what we learned so far a necessary consequence. The indifference towards concrete labour does not mean that one does not need to care, but the standard every producers has to live up to and which constantly changes what socially necessary labour means.

134:3 Of course, human labour-power must itself have attained a certain level of development before it can be expended in this or that form. But the value of a commodity represents human labour pure and simple, the expenditure of human labour in general. (…) It is the expenditure of simple labour-power, i.e. of the labour-power possessed in his bodily organism by every ordinary man, on the average, without being developed in any special way. Simple average labour, it is true, varies in character in different countries and at different cultural epochs, but in a particular society it is given. More complex labour counts only as intensified, or rather multiplied simple labour, so that a smaller quantity of complex labour is considered equal to a larger quantity of simple labour.

Value producing labour is ruthless against a certain branch of industry or activity, what implies that producers have to be flexible to fulfil this requirement. This is the issue at hand with simple and complicated labour. Simple labour is that labour which the average worker can perform. This might be tasks which are essentially simple manual labour such as cleaning, carrying stuff, pressing buttons, standing on many assembly lines. Where those things are concerned every human with average knowledge and strength can work.

In the 80s handling computers was not common knowledge, an average worker could not work where computers needed to be operated. However, today every child can use a computer because they are introduced to them at young age at home and at school. Even warehousers need to know a little about computers these days. What is considered average labour hence changes over time. Technical development and common knowledge taught in school are the main levers for this.

In the 80s handling a computer was the work of a specialist. Those who had this skill were not as easily replaced by other workers. This made their labour complicated labour. Complicated labour is that which cannot easily be replaced. This is something different from what was discussed when discussing socially necessary labour time. There, the labour of one strong gal could be replaced by the labour of two not so strong guys. The strong person is replaceable by two not so strong people. When we talk about complicated labour we talk about labour which is not as easily replaceable. For example, because people need a special education (software development etc.) and/or a lot of experience (surgery etc.).

While in socially necessary labour a worker produces more value per time because she works faster than the average, complicated labour produces more value per time because it is removed from comparison to some extend.

The permanent development of the productivity of labour obliterates these advantages continuously. What was considered specialised knowledge yesterday is now done by a machine which only needs somebody pressing a button. It is a permanent process of de-qualification. On the other hand this requires new specialised knowledge because those machines need to be maintained and repaired.

Furthermore, the state contributes to the back and forth of simple and complicated labour by organising public general and specialised education.

Finally, a word of caution. Complicated vs. simple labour has nothing to do with how valuable a producer is. That is, complicated labour does not produce more value because the worker is worth more, for example, because his education did cost more. It produces more value because she is not as easily replaced and one can hence command more value with the products. Education is a contributing factor why it is more difficult to compete against such a worker, but its price does not explain the value difference. Marx mentions a time when bricklaying was complicated labour because capital exhausted the labour force to such an extend that finding people strong enough to perform this work was not that easy.

1.3 The Value Form, or Exchange-value

In themselves commodities are only useful objects, things, stuff. However, what characterises these objects as commodities is that they have a dual nature. They are

138:1 at the same time objects of utility and bearers of value

This double character must find expression, otherwise these commodities are only objects. However, the value character of commodities is that they are definite quantities of social wealth as such. In other words, their value character is a purely social character and it can only appear in social relations, the social relation between commodity and commodity. The leading question of this subchapter is now how to express the value of commodities adequately.

In itself no commodity is able to express its value, it must express this quality in another commodity. Its quality of being a bit of social wealth must appear in relation to that wealth that it is part of. The simplest such expression is to relate two commodities and the first question is whether this expresses value adequately.

A second sub-question that Marx promises us an answer to is the genesis of money:

139:1 Everyone knows, if nothing else, that commodities have a common value-form which contrasts in the most striking manner with the motley natural forms of their use-values. I refer to the money-form.

Everybody knows that money is immediately value, it is valid power of access to social wealth because it is immediately social wealth. Why that is the case ought to be answered by answering the first question: how is value expressed adequately.

Finally, a small methodological pointer. Roughly speaking, the development of the first question “how does a commodity express its value” is emphasised when the relative form of value is discussed. The second question “how does money come to be immediately value” is emphasised when the equivalent form is discussed. That is, it might be tempting to reduce the development of the equivalent form of value to the mere mirror of the development of the relative form of value and hence to miss the development of money as master over commodities in this sub-chapter.

The Simple, Isolated, or Accidental Form of Value

139:3 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, or: 20 yards of linen are worth 1 coat

In this form of value two commodities are related to each other, each of which plays a very different role. The first commodity – the linen – is in the relative form of value and expresses its value. The coat is in the equivalent form of value and expresses the value of the linen. The first commodity – linen – plays the active role, the second commodity – coat – plays the passive role. The linen expresses its existence as social wealth by comparing itself with coats.

Note that “20 yards of linen are worth 1 coat” is not about saying that 20 yards of linen are exchanged for 1 coat. The point here is to express value not to exchange, the act of exchange may serve merely as the means by which the expression is accomplished. Here the question is that of expression of the power of access which logically comes before exercising this power: exchange. A hypothetical situation, to visualise what is going on, could be that the linen wants to exchange for coffee and expresses its social power of access to the coffee by equating itself with coat. The coffee may or may not recognise this claim, more on that later.

Both forms are inseparable but opposite moments of the same expression. One cannot have one without the other. For one commodity to be in the relative form of value it needs another commodity in the equivalent form to express its value. 20 yards of linen are worth 20 yards of linen is not an expression of value, it is a tautology. It does in fact only express that linen is linen, a definite quantity of some object. It says nothing about the linen being an access resource to things which are not linen. This is not an expression of value.

Of course, we may choose to reverse the expression: “20 yards of linen are worth 1 coat” becomes “1 coat is worth 20 yards of linen”. This is, however, a new expression, we now express the value of the coat, not the linen. Linen and coat change their roles and the question we ask and the answer we get is different from the question we ask here: what is the value of linen, how much wealth as such does it represent and command?

However, before considering this quantitative question we turn our attention to the qualitative dimension. Whatever the concrete numbers, the linen makes a claim about itself in the simple form of value.

The simple form of value qualitatively expresses the linen as coat equal by association of the linen with the coat. The linen expresses in itself that linen is linen. In equating itself with the coat, the linen also claims I am not only linen, I am also coat equal. Although linen does not claim that you can wear it like a coat, it is coat equal.

142:1 This is a roundabout way of saying that weaving too, in so far as it weaves value, has nothing to distinguish it from tailoring, and, consequently, is abstract human labour.

In relation to the labour that produced linen, the linen makes a similar claim. I am not the result of weaving I am also result of the same labour that produced coats.

142:2 The value of the linen as a congealed mass of human labour can be expressed only as an ‘objectivity’, a thing which is materially different from the linen itself and yet common to the linen and all other commodities.

In this society labour creates value, the quality to be and command social wealth. The linen attempts to express this quality: I am social wealth or a means of access, social command that can be owned. This quality must hence be expressed in something that itself can be owned – a thing: “I as a thing have the quality of that other thing”.

Quantitatively the absolute value of linen is expressed as a relation of a quantity of linen with quantities of coats. This means:

1. If the amount of labour required to produce linen changes, but that of the coat remains the same, then the quantitative expression of the value of the linen changes proportionally to that change. All good then.

2. If the amount of labour required to produce linen does not change, but that of coat changes, then the quantitative expression of the value of the linen changes inverse proportionally to that change. Although the magnitude of value of linen did not change, its expression does change. 

3. If the amount of labour required to produce linen and coats changes in the same proportions then the expression of the value of the linen does change. The value of the linen changed but its expression did not.

146:3 Thus real changes in the magnitude of value are neither unequivocally nor exhaustively reflected in their relative expression, or, in other words, in the magnitude of the relative value. The relative value of a commodity may vary, although its value remains constant.

This is analogous to the International Prototype Metre, i.e., the object which used to define what a metre is. As a natural object the International Prototype Metre is subject to decay, it hence slowly shrinks. Stating that Alice is about 2 x the International Prototype Metre hence expresses different absolute lengths depending on the year and hence the level of decay.

The Equivalent Form

142:3 Here it [the coat] is therefore a thing in which value is manifested, or which represents value in its tangible natural form. Yet the coat itself, the physical aspect of the coat-commodity, is purely a use-value. A coat as such no more expresses value than does the first piece of linen we come across.

The coat, in the equivalent form, is passive, only material for the linen to express its value. Furthermore, the coat has the same dilemma as the linen: for itself it is only a use-value and its value character is not expressed. However, through the action of the linen something happens: its natural form, its use-value becomes the immediate expression of value. Coat is social wealth as such because the linen expresses its quality of being social wealth by equating itself with the coat. In its relation to the linen the coat acquires a new determination which it does not have outside of this relation: coat is immediately value.

For comparison, assume Alice wants to express her quality as a Marxist and states: I am a Marxist as Bob. Indirectly, this means that at least Alice takes Bob to be a Marxist. That might be correct or not, but by expressing her Marxist qualities through a comparison with Bob Alice claims that Bob immediately has the quality of being a Marxist.

The linen by expressing its own value-quality by equating itself with coat, coat counts immediately as value for the linen. This also implies that coat can always be exchanged for linen:

147:1 The commodity linen brings to view its own existence as a value through the fact that the coat can be equated with the linen although it has not assumed a form of value distinct from its own physical form. The coat is directly exchangeable with the linen; in this way the linen in fact expresses its own existence as a value. The equivalent form of a commodity, accordingly, is the form in which it is directly exchangeable with other commodities.

The linen says: I am value because I am like coat, hence as value I am as good as coat, coat is my standard of value which I claim to live up to. This identity as value implies that coat is immediately exchangeable for linen – this is what value means: exchangeability as a bit social wealth as such. Thus, while the linen only says I am coat equal, it also implies coats are immediately exchangeable for me.

However, as the equivalent form the coat loses the ability to express its own magnitude, its magnitude of value is not expressed as magnitude of value any more. The coat figures as a definite quantity of a thing in the value-relation. The magnitude of value of linen is hence equated with a magnitude of coats. The contribution of the value form is that a magnitude of coats counts as a magnitude of value.

The advance in the value-form analysis is that in its attempt to express its value the commodity in the relative form of value assigns a special role in the hierarchy of commodities to the commodity in the equivalent form. The problem for the linen and any other commodity was that it could not express its value character independently. However, this character must become visible in order to use the linen as power of access, i.e., the power of access must be made visible in order to actually access. Through the expression of the value of the linen in the coat, the coat now does not have this problem any more:

148:1 The first peculiarity which strikes us when we reflect on the equivalent form is this, that use-value becomes the form of appearance of its opposite, value.

Independent of the value expression of the linen the coat as the same problem as the linen. One cannot see its value character. But as equivalent form the coat does not have this problem, its use-value, its natural form, its coat-ness, is sufficient: coat is immediately value. While linen has to enter a relation with the coat in order to express its value-character, the commodity in the equivalent form is immediately value and does not need to do this.

150:1 The body of the commodity, which serves as the equivalent, always figures as the embodiment of abstract human labour, and is always the product of some specific useful and concrete labour. This concrete labour therefore becomes the expression of abstract human labour. (…) The equivalent form therefore possesses a second peculiarity: in it, concrete labour becomes the form of manifestation of its opposite, abstract human labour.

If coat counts immediately as value within the value expression, then tailoring as concrete useful labour immediately counts as value-creating labour. Tailoring hence does not produce things which keep you warm in winter, but immediately produces social wealth as such. Tailoring immediately is labour as such, weaving only because it is equal to tailoring.

A barrier that any commodity must pass over is that privately produced things have to proof to be part of the social division of labour that is produced by accident and opposition between the producers. The commodity in equivalent form has also already taken this barrier. Every tailor produces things which immediately fit into the social division of labour:

150:4 But because this concrete labour, tailoring, counts exclusively as the expression of undifferentiated human labour, it possesses the characteristic of being identical with other kinds of labour, such as the labour embodied in the linen. Consequently, although, like all other commodity-producing labour, it is the labour of private individuals, it is nevertheless labour in its directly social form. It is precisely for this reason that it presents itself to us in the shape of a product which is directly exchangeable with other commodities.

The simple form of value considered as a whole

153:1 A close scrutiny of the expression of the value of commodity A contained in the value-relation of A to B has shown that within that relation the natural form of commodity A figures only as the aspect of use-value, while the natural form of B figures only as the form of value, or aspect of value. The internal opposition between use-value and value, hidden within the commodity, is therefore represented on the surface by an external opposition, i.e. by a relation between two commodities such that the one commodity, whose own value is supposed to be expressed, counts directly only as a use-value, whereas the other commodity, in which that value is to be expressed, counts directly only as exchange-value. Hence the simple form of value of a commodity is the simple form of appearance of the opposition between use-value and value which is contained within the commodity.

The commodity is use-value and value. It is a component of social wealth, a particular branch of it, and it is command or power over this social wealth because it is a part of it. On the one hand, it is the material of this command, the servant, on the other hand it is that which is command, the master. The value dimension cannot be expressed in a single commodity, it must be expressed in relation to other commodities. The result of this attempt at expressing this quality is a hierarchy in the commodities. In the expression of value the equivalent form counts immediately as value. The commodity in equivalent form counts immediately as socially wealth and thus as valid power of access. On the other hand, the commodity that tries to express its value immediately counts only as use-value. The degrading of use-value to a bearer of value reappears as the degrading of the commodity in the relative form of value with respect to the commodity in the equivalent form of value. Its attempt to express its quality of being command over social wealth, retaliates. The commodity creates an opposite which immediately counts as value and hence degrades itself. It wants to say “I am value” but in comparison to the equivalent form which it creates it is doubtful whether it is value.

For comparison lets consider the example from above. When Alice claims to be as much of a Marxist as Bob she says that Bob is a immediately recognised as a proper Marxist. At the same time Alice expresses the need to highlight her Marxist qualities by comparison with Bob. While Bob immediately is a Marxist, Alice has to prove it. This creates doubt: is Alice really a Marxist or is this just a claim?

From the attempt to express the value character of a commodity develops the need to prove it. This question will be pursued further in Chapter 3. For now, we continue with the question on how to express the value character of commodities adequately. Here, the simple form of value has its problems. Value is the social quality of a thing to be and access the material wealth of society. In the simple form of value this property is however expressed only in a single commodity and not in the world of commodities. The linen only claims to as good as coat as a value. Thereby it imprints on the coat the quality of being value. However, this implied claim is limited. Only the linen relates to coat that way. Coat is only immediately exchangeable for linen, as only linen claims it to be value. Hence, the linen failed to express its value properly and a relation to the whole of the world of commodities is required.

To continue the Marxist analogy. If Alice claims to be as much of a Marxist as Bob, Charley might ask “Who is Bob? I don’t recognise Bob as Marxist.” This way, Alice failed to express her quality of being a Marxist.

The Total or Expanded Form of Value

154:4 20 yards of linen = 1 coat or = 10 lb. tea or = 40 lb. coffee or = 1 quarter of corn or = 2 ounces of gold or = 1/2 ton of iron or = etc.

The expanded relative form of value

The 20 yards of linen now express their value in all kinds of different commodities. This way the linen announces that it is not only coat-like, but commodity-like. It expresses that the labour congealed in it is equal to all other labours which produce commodities. Hence, the value-character, which is indifferent towards the particular use-values, is expressed more adequately than in the simple form of value.

The particular equivalent form

156:1 Each commodity, such as coat, tea, iron, etc., figures in the expression of value of the linen as an equivalent, hence as a physical object possessing value. The specific natural form of each of these commodities is now a particular equivalent form alongside many others. In the same way, the many specific, concrete, and useful kinds of labour contained in the physical commodities now count as the same number of particular forms of realization or manifestation of human labour in general.

With respect to expressing value adequately this form still has a series of defects.

Defects of the total or expanded form of value

156:2 Firstly, the relative expression of value of the commodity is incomplete, because the series of its representations never comes to an end. (…)

156:2 Secondly, it is a motley mosaic of disparate and unconnected expressions of value.

The total form of value does not express the value character of linen as the unity of all commodities but simply in a series of simple expressions of value which are not connected. This way the linen does not express its value-character but only that it is equal to coats, to tea, to coffee … Thus, the defect of the simple form of value is not actually fixed.

156:3 And lastly, if, as must be the case, the relative value of each commodity is expressed in this expanded form, it follows that the relative form of value of each commodity is an endless series of expressions of value which are all different from the relative form of value of every other commodity.

The second defect is all the more apparent when each commodity takes on its own total form of value, they are all different from each other, are not commensurable.

These defects are also expressed in the equivalent form

156:2 Since the natural form of each particular kind of commodity is one particular equivalent form amongst innumerable other equivalent forms, the only equivalent forms which exist are limited ones, and each of them excludes all the others.

In the simple form of value the coat received the verdict from the linen to be immediately value. This way the linen produced the doubt whether it is value. Now the linen assigns the quality of being immediately value to all kinds of commodities in a row and hence doubts the immediate value character of the commodities in the particular equivalent forms. If it is not enough to express its value character in coat, well then coat is not the definite expression of value.²³

156:2 Similarly, the specific, concrete, useful kind of labour contained in each particular commodity-equivalent is only a particular kind of labour and therefore not an exhaustive form of appearance of human labour in general. It is true that the completed or total form of appearance of human labour is constituted by the totality of its particular forms of appearance. But in that case it has no single, unified form of appearance.

The labours that produced the respective commodities in the equivalent form do not stand for labour as such by the same argument as above.

To pick up the earlier comparison again. If Alice says she is as much of a Marxist as Bob but also as Eve, then she expresses that it is not self-evident that Bob himself is sufficient to express the quality of being a Marxist – if that was the case then there was no need to mention Eve.

The result of the simple form of value was that a commodity stamps the quality on the commodity in equivalent form to be immediately value, and thereby degrades itself to a value of questionable certainty. However, the defect of this form of value – it does not express access to social wealth as such, only insofar the coat has it – necessitated the total form of value. Yet, through the total form of value the commodity then again denies the commodities in the particular equivalent form the quality of being immediately value. Value hence has no independent expression and is not adequately expressed. We need a value-form in which the relation to all of the commodities is not accomplished through a juxtaposition of commodities but through a unified form of appearance.

157:3 If, then, we reverse the series 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, or = 10 lb. of tea, etc., i.e. if we give expression to the converse relation already implied in the series, we get

The General Form of Value

The changed character of the form of value

158:4 The two earlier forms express the value of each commodity either in terms of a single commodity of a different kind, or in a series of many commodities which differ from the first one. In both cases it is the private task, so to speak, of the individual commodity to give itself a form of value, and it accomplishes this task without the aid of the others, which play towards it the merely passive role of equivalent. The general form of value, on the other hand, can only arise as the joint contribution of the whole world of commodities.

In the previous value forms the linen was active and expressed its value using the rest of the world of commodities. The general form of value, on the other hand, develops as the common deed of all commodities. All commodities are active and express their value in the commodity in the general equivalent form … except for the commodity in that form.

The defects of earlier forms are therewith removed:

158:3 The new form we have just obtained expresses the values of the world of commodities through one single kind of commodity set apart from the rest, through the linen for example, and thus represents the values of all commodities by means of their equality with linen. Through its equation with linen, the value of every commodity is now not only differentiated from its own use-value, but from all use-values, and is, by that very fact, expressed as that which is common to all commodities. By this form, commodities are, for the first time, really brought into relation with each other as values, or permitted to appear to each other as exchange-values.

The relation to the whole world of commodities is unified: since all commodities relate to linen as the equivalent every commodity relates to all other commodities through linen.

158:4 A commodity only acquires a general expression of its value if, at the same time, all other commodities express their values in the same equivalent; and every newly emergent commodity must follow suit. It thus becomes evident that because the objectivity of commodities as values is the purely ‘social existence’ of these things, it can only be expressed through the whole range of their social relations; consequently the form of their value must possess social validity.

Every new commodity entering the market does not produce a problem for the expression of value, it does not question the value character of all other commodities as in the previous form (“how much are you worth expressed through me?”). Instead, each new commodity is required to submit to the general form of value if it wants to be part of the game.

159:1 In this form, when they are all counted as comparable with the linen, all commodities appear not only as qualitatively equal, as values in general, but also as values of quantitatively comparable magnitude. Because the magnitudes of their values are expressed in one and the same material, the linen, these magnitudes are now reflected in each other.

All commodities represent themselves as linen-equal. Linen counts as immediately valid abstract wealth and social power of access. By relating to a specific amount of linen, they all express their own magnitude of value. All commodities do this and hence relate their own magnitudes of value by relating their respective linen amounts to each other.

159:2 The general relative form of value imposes the character of universal equivalent on the linen, which is the commodity excluded, as equivalent, from the whole world of commodities. Its own natural form is the form assumed in common by the values of all commodities; it is therefore directly exchangeable with all other commodities. The physical form of the linen counts as the visible incarnation, the social chrysalis state, of all human labour.

The equivalent form, here linen, is not sabotaged. Because all commodities express their value in it, linen is immediately exchangeable with all commodities and hence immediately socially valid power of access.

161:2 The commodity that figures as universal equivalent is on the other hand excluded from the uniform and therefore universal relative form of value. If the linen, or any other commodity serving as universal equivalent, were, at the same time, to share in the relative form of value, it would have to serve as its own equivalent. We should then have: 20 yards of linen = 20 yards of linen, a tautology in which neither the value nor its magnitude is expressed. In order to express the relative value of the universal equivalent, we must rather reverse the form C. This equivalent has no relative form of value in common with other commodities; its value is, rather, expressed relatively in the infinite series of all other physical commodities. Thus the expanded relative form of value, or form B, now appears as the specific relative form of value of the equivalent commodity.

All commodities can now express their value except one. The commodity in the general equivalent form cannot express its own value quality, but it is immediately value and does not need to. To express its magnitude of value we have to revert to the previous form with all its problems.

The transition from the general form of value to the money form

162:2 The universal equivalent form is a form of value in general. It can therefore be assumed by any commodity. On the other hand, a commodity is only to be found in the universal equivalent form (form C) if, and in so far as, it is excluded from the ranks of all other commodities, as being their equivalent. Only when this exclusion becomes finally restricted to a specific kind of commodity does the uniform relative form of value of the world of commodities attain objective fixedness and general social validity. The specific kind of commodity with whose natural form the equivalent form is socially interwoven now becomes the money commodity, or serves as money. It becomes its specific social function, and consequently its social monopoly, to play the part of universal equivalent within the world of commodities.

The money form does not differ qualitatively from the general form of value. The only difference is which commodity really takes on the equivalent form and hence can claim the unique power of being immediately value. Historically, this was gold.

The Money Form

Because gold achieved the status of being the universal equivalent form and hence of being immediately valid value it is now sufficient to use the simple form of value to express value in a socially valid way:

163:1 The simple expression of the relative value of a single commodity, such as linen, in a commodity which is already functioning as the money commodity, such as gold, is the price form. The ‘price form’ of the linen is therefore: 20 yards of linen = 2 ounces of gold.

The price is the value expression of a commodity in the money commodity. By representing itself as money-equal a commodity expresses its value adequately. However, what is not expressed in the price form is that this is only possible (contrary to the simple form of value) because all other commodities do the same.

To finish the earlier analogy. Alice can now say “I am a Marxist like Karl Marx.”²⁴ Karl Marx is universally recognised as immediately Marxist and by declaring to be Karl-Marx-equal Alice expresses her quality to derive the price form etc.

The price form founds the basis for a prominent false conception of money. People take gold to be identical with social wealth because it is gold, because it is shiny, has a certain weight. Gold in this view is money because it is gold. The value form analysis shows that this quality of gold is due to the rest of the commodities relating to gold as the immediate expression of value. Only within this social relation gold is by nature value.

The value-form analysis resulted in: gold is money because all other commodities express their value in the natural form of gold. Only within this relation gold appears as immediately socially valid abstract wealth. Gold mining is immediately value-producing and gold miners produce immediately social wealth. Although they have no active part in being the material for all other commodities, they get rid of any doubt whether they are value or not. Gold becomes the first among equals, the rest is degraded to second. The other commodities have to express their value-character and they must do this in the money-commodity.

A commodity is value. But it can only express its value insofar it relates to a commodity which counts as immediately value – money. Then, however, the independence of value in the commodity is questioned if there exists a commodity which immediately counts as value. This is the dependence of the commodity. The money commodity is immediately value, it counts as such. This is the independence of money. On the other hand, it only counts as such insofar the other commodities express their value in it. This is the dependence of money, it is dependent on the world of commodities.

1.4. The Fetish-Like Character of the Commodity and its Secret

In this subchapter Marx reflects on how the determinations found so far are reflected in the consciousness of those who are practically concerned with commodities, i.e., at this level of presentation of commodity producers. First, neither the use-value side of commodities is unknown nor the ingredients of what becomes value in this society, That is,

1. that the objects of consumption need to be produced,

2. that it is important to consider the time it takes to produce the things for consumption,

3. that one doesn’t produce everything one wants to consume oneself but that there is a division of labour,

all these things are well-understood and no mystery. However, how these determinations play their role for commodities is something not many people know. In particular, that these determinations do not appear as such, but wrongly. The weirdness of a social quality of a thing is what they deal with on a daily basis but do not understand:

164:2 The equality of the kinds of human labour takes on a physical form in the equal objectivity of the products of labour as values; the measure of the expenditure of human labour-power by its duration takes on the form of the magnitude of the value of the products of labour; and finally the relationships between the producers, within which the social characteristics of their labours are manifested, take on the form of a social relation between the products of labour.

Hence,

1. that the respective concrete labours are reduced to homogeneous abstract human labour appears in the form of equality of the products of labour: “my commodity exchanges for theirs”;

2. that the socially necessary labour time determines the magnitude of value appears as the relation of magnitudes of value of their commodities: “my thing is worth twice as much as theirs”;

3. the social relation of the commodity producers appears as a social relation of products of labour: “My coats do not sell on the market any more, well, then I’ll produce linen instead.”

Only in exchange their nexus, total social labour, appears and how well they are doing in this sort of division of labour is expressed through their commodities: “How much does this commodity command?” The people in this society produce this strange social context but it appears to each of them as if she was reacting so objective constraints:

167:1 Their own movement within society has for them the form of a movement made by things things, and these things, far from being under their control, in fact control them.

164:3 I call this the fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour as soon as they are produced as commodities, and is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.

Marx uses the analogy of the fetish, an object which is attributed supernatural powers and which ought to inform the actions of people while in reality when people bow down to the fetish they bow down to their own fantasy. The analogy is insofar fitting as in the world of commodities people also bow down before their own products as if they had their own lives. However, the analogy breaks down when we consider that we can recognise religion as what it is and stop worshipping. Then the power of the fetish over us is broken. We can also understand the capitalist mode of production but this does not mean the power of commodities over us is broken. Capitalism is no illusion it requires a social act to get rid of it. First, there is the state which guarantees private property and hence lays the foundation for commodity production and circulation. Then there are people who accept this offer and on that basis produce the social relations of a society based on commodity production.

Commodity producers do not benefit from the insight presented so far. In their practical activity they have to live up to the standards of abstract labour which they do not control but are presented to them on the market in the form of commodity prices.

What initially concerns producers in practice when they make an exchange is how much of some other product they get for their own; in what proportions can the products be exchanged? As soon as these proportions have attained a certain customary stability, they appear to result from the nature of the products, so that, for instance, one ton of iron and two ounces of gold appear to be equal in value, in the same way as a pound of gold and a pound of iron are equal in weight, despite their different physical and chemical properties. The value character of the products of labour becomes firmly established only when they act as magnitudes of value. These magnitudes vary continually, independently of the will, foreknowledge and actions of the exchangers. (167)

The only relevant question for practically dealing with commodity production is how much one gets for one’s commodity. The fact that on does not control the price of the commodity is known to commodity producers, they have an estimate how much they can ask and see how good their estimate was on the market. Their dependency on the rest of commodity producers is also clear to them, they are presented with the prices of the competition on the market and the price they can command from their customers. The realisation that this is down to abstract labour does not enlighten these realisations. In particular, it is of no use in deciding what to produce and how.

Interpretations

Many different interpretations of the fetish-like character have been offered.

Commodity fetishism is often mistaken as “consumerism”: people want stuff they ostensibly do not actually need. This is clearly something very different from what Marx discusses in this subchapter. In fact, while this reading attributes great agency to the actors by asking them to readjust their spending, the fetish subchapter emphasises the opposite: commodity producers have to live up to the standard of abstract labour which appears to them as an objective constraint.

David Harvey talks about commodity fetishism as a lack of knowledge about the production chain.²⁵ One does not know who produced the commodity under which conditions. Harvey hence is exclusively concerned with the use-value side of the commodity and the problem he identifies exists in any reasonably complex society. The issue talked about in this chapter, i.e., how our social relations of production appear to us as relations of the products of labour, is hence lost completely.

Commodity fetishism is also often talked about as “necessarily wrong consciousness”.

In Capitalism one is required to relate to commodities and money as means for satisfaction of needs. But these two are the reason why needs and desires remain unfulfilled and which introduce irrational demands which one has to satisfy. One hence has to relate to things as means which are not. A bit like a tool which is so bad it does not actually perform the task it is supposed to. The practical consciousness in Capitalism is that one has to relate to commodities and money as one’s means but they are strictly speaking not. In this sense “necessarily wrong consciousness” is correct: one necessarily has to relate to these things in a wrong way in practice.

A notion close to this is that we relate to commodities and money as means which are beyond our control and understanding because they have their own life. Even the most successful capitalist does not control the market and if there is a crisis she is confronted with this economic development beyond her control. Some take from this the critique that humans do not adequately understand the society they live in. This reading takes interest in the commodity fetishism because it expresses this lack of understanding and enlightenment. This reading takes away “things are not as they appear” or “social relations appear reified”. The kernel of this critique is that it is a problem if something is not properly understood. This is a rather abstract problem, many situations are plausible in which the issue that one does not understand something does not present itself as a problem. In particular, this way the economic determinations what appears how and what this means for the satisfaction of needs is lost, which is unfortunate.

In both previous versions necessarily wrong consciousness stood for how people relate to commodities and money in practice. Nothing prevents people from theoretically working through the laws of this society and to arrive at the conclusion that they are detrimental. However, often “necessarily wrong consciousness” is taken as that people have no choice and cannot see through the social conditions. Of course, the existence of the speaker making such a claim disproves the theory: she saw through the fog of ideology why should it be impossible for others? The practically enforced consciousness of the world of commodities does not necessitate a theoretical consciousness. However, some theoretical consciousness bears the mark of translating practical consciousness into theory.