A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy — John Shaqi
A Contribution to the Critique of Political EconomyMarx, Karl
Philosophy
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Marx, Karl
Economics; Marxian economics
from the specific part which the commodity plays as a result of the
universal relation which all other commodities bear toward it in the
process of exchange. The use-value of every commodity as an object of
a particular want, has a different value in different hands, e. g., it
has a different value in the hands of the one who disposes of it, than
in those of the one who acquires it. But the commodity singled out as
the universal equivalent, is now an object of a universal want arising
from the very process of exchange, and it has the same use-value to
everybody, viz., that of serving as the depository of exchange value,
of being a universal means of exchange. Thus we find in one commodity
the solution of the contradiction which is inherent in commodity as
such, namely, of being at one and the same time a particular use-value
and a universal equivalent, and, therefore, a use-value for everybody
or universal use-value. Thus, while all other commodities express their
exchange value in the form of an ideal equation with the excluded
commodity―an equation yet to be realized―the use-value of the special
commodity, although real, appears in the process itself as a mere
form which is yet to be realized through transformation into actual
use-values. Originally the commodity appeared simply as commodity, as
universal labor-time embodied in a particular use-value. In the process
of exchange, all commodities are related to the one excluded commodity
as to a simple commodity, one which appears as the embodiment of
universal labor-time in a particular use-value. Thus, _particular_
commodities become related to one particular commodity as a universal
commodity.[13] In that manner the mutual relations of possessors of
commodities based on the fact that they regard their labor as universal
social labor, takes on the aspect of their relations to commodities as
exchange values; and the mutual relation of commodities as exchange
values appears in the process of exchange as the relation of all of
them to one particular commodity as to a specially adopted means of
expression of their exchange value; again, from the point of view of
that particular commodity the above relation appears as its specific
relation to all other commodities, and, therefore, as its own definite,
spontaneous, social character. The particular commodity which thus
appears as the specially adopted expression of the exchange value
of all other commodities, or the exchange value of commodities as a
particular exclusive commodity, is _money_. Money is a crystallization
of the exchange value of commodities which they themselves form in
the process of exchange. Thus, while commodities become _use-values_
to each other in the process of exchange by casting off all definite
forms and entering into mutual relations in their direct material
shape, they must assume a new form, viz., proceed to the formation of
money in order to appear as _exchange values_ to each other. Money
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