Whatever the social form of wealth may be, use-values always have a substance of their own, independent of that form. One can not tell by the taste of wheat whether it has been raised by a Russian serf, a French peasant, or an English capitalist. Although the object of social wants and, therefore, mutually connected in society, use-values do not bear any marks of the relations of social production. Suppose, we have a commodity whose use-value is that of a diamond. We can not tell by looking at the diamond that it is a commodity. When it serves as a use-value, aesthetic or mechanical, on the breast of a harlot, or in the hand of a glasscutter, it is a diamond and not a commodity. It is the necessary prerequisite of a commodity to be a use-value, but it is immaterial to the use-value whether it is a commodity or not. Use-value in this indifference to the nature of its economic destination, i. e. use-value as such lies outside the sphere of investigation of political economy.[3] It falls within the sphere of the latter only in so far as it forms its own economic destination. It forms the material basis which directly underlies a definite economic relation called _exchange value_. Exchange-value appears at first sight as a _quantitative relation_, as a proportion in which use-values are exchanged for one another. In such a relation they constitute equal exchangeable quantities. Thus, a volume of Propercius and eight ounces of snuff may represent the same exchange value, in spite of the dissimilar use-values of tobacco and elegy. As exchange-value, one kind of use-value is worth as much as another kind, if only taken in right proportion. The exchange value of a palace can be expressed in a certain number of boxes of shoe-blacking. On the contrary, London manufacturers of shoe-blacking have expressed the exchange value of their many boxes of blacking, in palaces. Thus, entirely apart from their natural forms and without regard to the specific kind of wants for which they serve as use-values, commodities in certain quantities equal each other, take each other’s place in exchange, pass as equivalents, and in spite of their variegated appearance, represent the same entity. Use-values are primarily means of existence. These means of existence, however, are themselves products of social life, the result of expended human vital power, _materialized labor_. As the embodiment of social labor, all commodities are the crystallization of the same substance. Let us now consider the nature of this substance, i. e., of labor, which is expressed in exchange value.