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Chapter 1: The Commodity. Section 1: Use-value and value. Detailed Commentary readingcapital.github.io

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. – that 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” appears 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 must first be produced and somehow production must be related to consumption: what is produced for whom, who produces it and how. By definition this is a feature of any division of labour and cannot change. What can change, though, is how this “coordination” is accomplished, the social form. 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.”2 How these laws assert themselves and what additional laws assert themselves if the wealth of societies appears in commodity form is the subject of 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.”3 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. What does scarcity — “there is not enough” — mean? For example, say there is not enough coffee at some seminar for all to drink enough coffee to stay awake. Scarcity 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. Scarcity always relates something to a need or desire for it. It does not make sense to say there is not enough coffee, but we have to say “not enough for what?” 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, 1 Wikipedia writes “In economics, a commodity is a marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs.” and cites Karl Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”, International Publishers, New York, 1987, p. 269. If it is true that a commodity is produced to satisfy needs and wants will become clear throughout this chapter, it is certainly not what Marx claims on p.269 of “A Contribution”.

2 Marx To Ludwig Kugelmann, London, 11 July 1868 (available at http://marx.libcom.org/works/1868/letters/68_07_11.htm) 3 Wikipedia Entry on “Economics”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics, last accessed: June 2014.

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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, Thomas Sowell explains scarcity using beach-front homes, i.e. something which is thought of as limited by its location, i.e. 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 desert 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.

2. Marx’s starting point is the particularity of the capitalist mode 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 with which Marx starts. the individual commodity appears as its elementary form. Our investigation therefore begins with the analysis of the commodity.

The appearance of material wealth in commodity form is the starting point of the analysis, not its end.4 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.

The commodity is, at first,5 an external object, a thing which through its qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind.

Following his predecessors6 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 London to Glasgow? 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 “services” in order 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 4 That the appearance which confronts us is not the last word on wealth in a capitalist society is expressed by it being mentioned in the first rather than the last sentence of Capital. However, many commentators only pick up on the distinction between essence and appearance or turn it into one of truth and false semblance: “But notice something about the language. ‘Appears’ occurs twice in the passage, and, plainly, ‘appears’ is not the same as ‘is.’ The choice of this word - and watch out for it, because Marx makes frequent use of it throughout Capital - signals that something else is going on beneath the surface appearance. We are immediately invited to think about what this might be.” (David Harvey, “A Companion to Marx’s Capital”, Verso, London, 2010, p. 15) “However, how something appears does not necessarily match how it is, it’s just how that what is appears.” (an earlier version of our own commentary) These comments miss the point of this paragraph: the distinction between the content material wealth and its commodity form.

5 Fowkes has “first of all” here, but “at first” is the correct translation (cf. Hans Ehrbar’s translation).

6 “To begin with, a commodity, in the language of the English economists, is ‘any thing necessary, useful or pleasant in life,’ an object of human wants” (Karl Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”, International Publishers, New York, 1987, p. 269)

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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.

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.

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.

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

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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 very much 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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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).

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.

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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.”7 Usefulness is grounded in particular qualities of a thing and these qualities make it a useful thing.8 Marx here defines “useful thing” and “use-value” as synonyms.

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

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Earlier we determined material wealth as useful objects which 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.

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.

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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 much. One grain of rice is too little for a meal, 100g perhaps about adequate. 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.

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

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Karl Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”, International Publishers, New York, 1987, p. 269 In the first edition Marx contents himself with: “It is the utility of a thing for human life that turns it into a use-value. By way of abbreviation let us term the useful thing itself (or commodity-body, as iron, wheat, diamond, etc.) use-value, good, article.” (Karl Marx, “Capital”, 1st Edition, p.7) 8

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

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 commodities under all social organisations of production and consumption.9 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 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 usevalue 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.

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 2 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.

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.

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 9 That some objects wear out even when we do not use them, is no counter argument to this claim. The claim is not that only consumption wears out objects, but that whatever else might cause it, consumption does so, too. That some objects wear out so slowly that we can pretty much ignore it from a practical standpoint also does not constitute a counter argument to the claim that continuous production and reproduction is necessary for a society to survive.

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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 exchangevalues, 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: Let us consider the matter more closely. 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 bootpolish, 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 a somewhat quantified “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. How far this access reaches is only a question of how many apples they have. 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. That one can use apples to access chairs is then only an expression of the more general quality of apples to access anything. Apples do not have chairs as exchange-value because apples are access resources to chairs, but because they are means of access sans phrase. All those different exchange-values express this same quality of the apple about the apple.

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.

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, they are all Elizabeth’s subjects and count as particular expressions of this.

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, to grant access to, any part of social wealth — given enough apples — remains. What gives apples this power?

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.

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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, represent 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. Chairs access apples because apples access chairs, and vice versa.

In exchange the chair recognises our apples as a bit 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 social wealth because they are. Commodity exchange means that any particular bit of social wealth counts 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?

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.’ 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 if 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 don’t. More generally, if we compare the usefulness of different usevalues 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 compares 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 absurd but 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

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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 remain 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 gets 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 one to exchange it for all other things in society if I 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 recognised as social wealth themselves.

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?

It is clear that material wealth must be produced, it does not fall from the sky but requires effort. It is also clear — cf. Marx’ letter to Kugelmann above — that under any mode of production somehow society’s labour must be directed, production and consumption “coordinated”. However, in the societies “where the capitalist mode of production prevails” not much coordination is actually going on. Producers produce in private, without a common plan. Instead, they produce for exchange and only on the market they find out if their products can be exchanged for those products which they need. On the market they find out if the product of their efforts is recognised as social wealth, if their labour was in vain or not. The form in which production and consumption are coordinated is that the products of labour all count as a bit of social wealth as such if they are successfully exchanged. In a commodity producing and exchanging society the fact that it requires effort to produce material wealth is used to make the other exchanging party hand over its bit of social wealth in return. This is what we mean when we say that commodities recognise each other as social wealth.

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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 how its value is determined 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.10 Marx will pick this up again briefly at the end of this sub-chapter.

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

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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.

10 For those who don’t want to wait that long, the text “Gentrification — the economy of the land and the role of politics” available at http: //antinational.org/en/ explains in simple terms how land is valued in a capitalist economy.

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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.11 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.12 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 accumulated13 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).

11 “Labour seems a quite simple category. The conception of labour in this general form – as labour as such – is also immeasurably old. Nevertheless, when it is economically conceived in this simplicity, ‘labour’ is as modern a category as are the relations which create this simple abstraction.[…][T]his abstraction of labour as such is not merely the mental product of a concrete totality of labours. Indifference towards specific labours corresponds to a form of society in which individuals can with ease transfer from one labour to another, and where the specific kind is a matter of chance for them, hence of indifference. Not only the category, labour, but labour in reality has here become the means of creating wealth in general, and has ceased to be organically linked with particular individuals in any specific form. Such a state of affairs is at its most developed in the most modern form of existence of bourgeois society – in the United States. Here, then, for the first time, the point of departure of modern economics, namely the abstraction of the category ‘labour’, ‘labour as such’, labour pure and simple, becomes true in practice. The simplest abstraction, then, which modern economics places at the head of its discussions, and which expresses an immeasurably ancient relation valid in all forms of society, nevertheless achieves practical truth as an abstraction only as a category of the most modern society. […] This example of labour shows strikingly how even the most abstract categories, despite their validity – precisely because of their abstractness – for all epochs, are nevertheless, in the specific character of this abstraction, themselves likewise a product of historic relations, and possess their full validity only for and within these relations.” (Karl Marx, “Grundrisse”, p. 103ff) 12 cf. Hans G. Ehrbar, “Annotations to Karl Marx’ Capital Volume 1”, p. 39 13 “accumulated” here shouldn’t be confused with accumulation later in this book. The German text has aufhäufen here, which can be translated as amass, accumulate, pile.

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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.

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 exchangevalue. 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.14 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.

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 labourtime 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 handloom 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.

14 David Harvey’s description of value – of which exchange-value is a form of appearance – is wrong as he describes value as the unity of usevalue and exchange-value: “Having begun with use-value and exchange-value-a dichotomy-he then arrives at a unitary concept of value …” (David Harvey, “A Companion to Marx’s Capital”, Verso, London, 2010, p. 32)

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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 one 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 valueproducing, 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.

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.

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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.

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 labourtime. 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.15 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.16 So 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 15 The oil price is not fully determined by this. The switch of branches of industry discussed above which enforces the law of value for commodities is not necessarily possible: there are only a few regions in the world which have oil and hence simply throwing more labour at the problem is not necessarily possible for someone who does not access to these regions.

16 “A commodity as a use-value has an eminently material function. Wheat for example is used as food. A machine replaces a certain amount of labour. This function, by virtue of which a commodity is a use-value, an article of consumption, may be called its service, the service it renders as a use-value. But the commodity as an exchange-value is always considered solely from the standpoint of the result. What matters is not the service it renders, but the service rendered to it in the course of its production.” (Karl Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”, International Publishers, New York, 1987, p. 278)

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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.

(Now we know the substance of value. It is labour. We know the measure of its magnitude. It is labourtime. 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.)

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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.”17 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.18 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.

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David Harvey, “A Companion to Marx’s Capital”, Verso, London, 2010, p. 27 cf. Critisticuffs, “A Companion to David Harvey’s Companion to Marx’ Capital, Chapter 1” available at https://critisticuffs.org/texts/ david-harvey/.

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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.

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