A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily
understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer
thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. So
far as it is a value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it,
whether we consider it from the point of view that by its properties it
is capable of satisfying human wants, or from the point that those
properties are the product of human labour. It is as clear as noon-day,
that man, by his industry, changes the forms of the materials furnished
by Nature, in such a way as to make them useful to him. The form of
wood, for instance, is altered, by making a table out of it. Yet, for
all that, the table continues to be that common, every-day thing, wood.
But, so soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into
something transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the ground,
but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and
evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than
"table-turning" ever was.
The mystical character of commodities does not originate, therefore, in
their use-value. Just as little does it proceed from the nature of the
determining factors of value. For, in the first place, however varied
the useful kinds of labour, or productive activities, may be, it is a
physiological fact, that they are functions of the human organism, and
that each such function, whatever may be its nature or form, is
essentially the expenditure of human brain, nerves, muscles, &c.
Secondly, with regard to that which forms the ground-work for the
quantitative determination of value, namely, the duration of that
expenditure, or the quantity of labour, it is quite clear that there is
a palpable difference between its quantity and quality. In all states of
society, the labour-time that it costs to produce the means of
subsistence, must necessarily be an object of interest to mankind,
though not of equal interest in different stages of development.(27)
And lastly, from the moment that men in any way work for one another,
their labour assumes a social form.
Whence, then, arises the enigmatical character of the product of labour,
so soon as it assumes the form of commodities? Clearly from this form
itself. The equality of all sorts of human labour is expressed
objectively by their products all being equally values; the measure of
the expenditure of labour-power by the duration of that expenditure,
takes the form of the quantity of value of the products of labour; and
finally the mutual relations of the producers, within which the social
character of their labour affirms itself, take the form of a social
relation between the products.
A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the
social character of men's labour appears to them as an objective
character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation
of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to
them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between
the products of their labour. This is the reason why the products of
labour become commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same
time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses. In the same way the
light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective excitation
of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside the
eye itself. But, in the act of seeing, there is at all events, an actual
passage of light from one thing to another, from the external object to
the eye. There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is
different with commodities. There, the existence of the things qua
commodities, and the value-relation between the products of labour which
stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connexion with their
physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom.
There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in
their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order,
therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-
enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions
of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and
entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it
is in the world of commodities with the products of men's hands. This I
call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so
soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore
inseparable from the production of commodities.
This Fetishism of commodities has its origin, as the foregoing analysis
has already shown, in the peculiar social character of the labour that
produces them.
As a general rule, articles of utility become commodities, only because
they are products of the labour of private individuals or groups of
individuals who carry on their work independently of each other. The sum
total of the labour of all these private individuals forms the aggregate
labour of society. Since the producers do not come into social contact
with each other until they exchange their products, the specific social
character of each producer's labour does not show itself except in the
act of exchange. In other words, the labour of the individual asserts
itself as a part of the labour of society, only by means of the
relations which the act of exchange establishes directly between the
products, and indirectly, through them, between the producers. To the
latter, therefore, the relations connecting the labour of one individual
with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between
individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations
between persons and social relations between things. It is only by being
exchanged that the products of labour acquire, as values, one uniform
social status, distinct from their varied forms of existence as objects
of utility. This division of a product into a useful thing and a value
becomes practically important, only when exchange has acquired such an
extension that useful articles are produced for the purpose of being
exchanged, and their character as values has therefore to be taken into
account, beforehand, during production. From this moment the labour of
the individual producer acquires socially a two-fold character. On the
one hand, it must, as a definite useful kind of labour, satisfy a
definite social want, and thus hold its place as part and parcel of the
collective labour of all, as a branch of a social division of labour
that has sprung up spontaneously. On the other hand, it can satisfy the
manifold wants of the individual producer himself, only in so far as the
mutual exchangeability of all kinds of useful private labour is an
established social fact, and therefore the private useful labour of each
producer ranks on an equality with that of all others. The equalisation
of the most different kinds of labour can be the result only of an
abstraction from their inequalities, or of reducing them to their common
denominator, viz. expenditure of human labour-power or human labour in
the abstract. The two-fold social character of the labour of the
individual appears to him, when reflected in his brain, only under those
forms which are impressed upon that labour in every-day practice by the
exchange of products. In this way, the character that his own labour
possesses of being socially useful takes the form of the condition, that
the product must be not only useful, but useful for others, and the
social character that his particular labour has of being the equal of
all other particular kinds of labour, takes the form that all the
physically different articles that are the products of labour. have one
common quality, viz., that of having value.
Hence, when we bring the products of our labour into relation with each
other as values, it is not because we see in these articles the material
receptacles of homogeneous human labour. Quite the contrary: whenever,
by an exchange, we equate as values our different products, by that very
act, we also equate, as human labour, the different kinds of labour
expended upon them. We are not aware of this, nevertheless we do
it.(28) Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing
what it is. It is value, rather, that converts every product into a
social hieroglyphic. Later on, we try to decipher the hieroglyphic, to
get behind the secret of our own social products; for to stamp an object
of utility as a value, is just as much a social product as language. The
recent scientific discovery, that the products of labour, so far as they
are values, are but material expressions of the human labour spent in
their production, marks, indeed, an epoch in the history of the
development of the human race, but, by no means, dissipates the mist
through which the social character of labour appears to us to be an
objective character of the products themselves. The fact, that in the
particular form of production with which we are dealing, viz., the
production of commodities, the specific social character of private
labour carried on independently, consists in the equality of every kind
of that labour, by virtue of its being human labour, which character,
therefore, assumes in the product the form of value-this fact appears to
the producers, notwithstanding the discovery above referred to, to be
just as real and final, as the fact, that, after the discovery by
science of the component gases of air, the atmosphere itself remained
unaltered.
What, first of all, practically concerns producers when they make an
exchange, is the question, how much of some other product they get for
their own? in what proportions the products are exchangeable? When these
proportions have, by custom, attained a certain 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 as naturally to be of equal
value as a pound of gold and a pound of iron in spite of their different
physical and chemical qualities appear to be of equal weight. The
character of having value, when once impressed upon products, obtains
fixity only by reason of their acting and re-acting upon each other as
quantities of value. These quantities vary continually, independently of
the will, foresight and action of the producers. To them, their own
social action takes the form of the action of objects, which rule the
producers instead of being ruled by them. It requires a fully developed
production of commodities before, from accumulated experience alone, the
scientific conviction springs up, that all the different kinds of
private labour, which are carried on independently of each other, and
yet as spontaneously developed branches of the social division of
labour, are continually being reduced to the quantitative proportions in
which society requires them. And why? Because, in the midst of all the
accidental and ever fluctuating exchange-relations between the products,
the labour-time socially necessary for their production forcibly asserts
itself like an over-riding law of Nature. The law of gravity thus
asserts itself when a house falls about our ears.(29) The
determination of the magnitude of value by labour-time is therefore a
secret, hidden under the apparent fluctuations in the relative values of
commodities. Its discovery, while removing all appearance of mere
accidentality from the determination of the magnitude of the values of
products, yet in no way alters the mode in which that determination
takes place.
Man's reflections on the forms of social life, and consequently, also,
his scientific analysis of those forms, take a course directly opposite
to that of their actual historical development. He begins, post festum,
with the results of the process of development ready to hand before him.
The characters that stamp products as commodities, and whose
establishment is a necessary preliminary to the circulation of
commodities, have already acquired the stability of natural, self-
understood forms of social life, before man seeks to decipher, not their
historical character, for in his eyes they are immutable, but their
meaning. Consequently it was the analysis of the prices of commodities
that alone led to the determination of the magnitude of value, and it
was the common expression of all commodities in money that alone led to
the establishment of their characters as values. It is, however, just
this ultimate money-form of the world of commodities that actually
conceals, instead of disclosing, the social character of private labour,
and the social relations between the individual producers. When I state
that coats or boots stand in a relation to linen, because it is the
universal incarnation of abstract human labour, the absurdity of the
statement is self-evident. Nevertheless, when the producers of coats and
boots compare those articles with linen, or, what is the same thing,
with gold or silver, as the universal equivalent, they express the
relation between their own private labour and the collective labour of
society in the same absurd form.
The categories of bourgeois economy consist of such like forms. They are
forms of thought expressing with social validity the conditions and
relations of a definite, historically determined mode of production,
viz., the production of commodities. The whole mystery of commodities,
all the magic and necromancy that surrounds the products of labour as
long as they take the form of commodities, vanishes therefore, so soon
as we come to other forms of production.
Since Robinson Crusoe's experiences are a favourite theme with political
economists,(30) let us take a look at him on his island. Moderate
though he be, yet some few wants he has to satisfy, and must therefore
do a little useful work of various sorts, such as making tools and
furniture, taming goats, fishing and hunting. Of his prayers and the
like we take no account, since they are a source of pleasure to him, and
he looks upon them as so much recreation. In spite of the variety of his
work, he knows that his labour, whatever its form, is but the activity
of one and the same Robinson, and consequently, that it consists of
nothing but different modes of human labour. Necessity itself compels
him to apportion his time accurately between his different kinds of
work. Whether one kind occupies a greater space in his general activity
than another, depends on the difficulties, greater or less as the case
may be, to be overcome in attaining the useful effect aimed at. This our
friend Robinson soon learns by experience, and having rescued a watch,
ledger, and pen and ink from the wreck, commences, like a true-born
Briton, to keep a set of books. His stock-book contains a list of the
objects of utility that belong to him, of the operations necessary for
their production; and lastly, of the labour-time that definite
quantities of those objects have, on an average, cost him. All the
relations between Robinson and the objects that form this wealth of his
own creation, are here so simple and clear as to be intelligible without
exertion, even to Mr. Sedley Taylor. And yet those relations contain all
that is essential to the determination of value.
Let us now transport ourselves from Robinson's island bathed in light to
the European middle ages shrouded in darkness. Here, instead of the
independent man, we find everyone dependent, serfs and lords, vassals
and suzerains, laymen and clergy. Personal dependence here characterises
the social relations of production just as much as it does the other
spheres of life organised on the basis of that production. But for the
very reason that personal dependence forms the ground-work of society,
there is no necessity for labour and its products to assume a fantastic
form different from their reality. They take the shape, in the
transactions of society, of services in kind and payments in kind. Here
the particular and natural form of labour, and not, as in a society
based on production of commodities, its general abstract form is the
immediate social form of labour. Compulsory labour is just as properly
measured by time, as commodity-producing labour; but every serf knows
that what he expends in the service of his lord, is a definite quantity
of his own personal labour-power. The tithe to be rendered to the priest
is more matter of fact than his blessing. No matter, then, what we may
think of the parts played by the different classes of people themselves
in this society, the social relations between individuals in the
performance of their labour, appear at all events as their own mutual
personal relations, and are not disguised under the shape of social
relations between the products of labour.
For an example of labour in common or directly associated labour, we
have no occasion to go back to that spontaneously developed form which
we find on the threshold of the history of all civilised races.(31) We
have one close at hand in the patriarchal industries of a peasant
family, that produces corn, cattle, yarn, linen, and clothing for home
use. These different articles are, as regards the family, so many
products of its labour, but as between themselves, they are not
commodities. The different kinds of labour, such as tillage, cattle
tending, spinning, weaving and making clothes, which result in the
various products, are in themselves, and such as they are, direct social
functions, because functions of the family, which, just as much as a
society based on the production of commodities, possesses a
spontaneously developed system of division of labour. The distribution
of the work within the family, and the regulation of the labour-time of
the several members, depend as well upon differences of age and sex as
upon natural conditions varying with the seasons. The labour-power of
each individual, by its very nature, operates in this case merely as a
definite portion of the whole labour-power of the family, and therefore,
the measure of the expenditure of individual labour-power by its
duration, appears here by its very nature as a social character of their
labour.
Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, a community of free
individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in
common, in which the labour-power of all the different individuals is
consciously applied as the combined labour-power of the community. All
the characteristics of Robinson's labour are here repeated, but with
this difference, that they are social, instead of individual. Everything
produced by him was exclusively the result of his own personal labour,
and therefore simply an object of use for himself. The total product of
our community is a social product. One portion serves as fresh means of
production and remains social. But another portion is consumed by the
members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this portion amongst
them is consequently necessary. The mode of this distribution will vary
with the productive organisation of the community, and the degree of
historical development attained by the producers. We will assume, but
merely for the sake of a parallel with the production of commodities,
that the share of each individual producer in the means of subsistence
is determined by his labour-time. Labour-time would, in that case, play
a double part. Its apportionment in accordance with a definite social
plan maintains the proper proportion between the different kinds of work
to be done and the various wants of the community. On the other hand, it
also serves as a measure of the portion of the common labour borne by
each individual, and of his share in the part of the total product
destined for individual consumption. The social relations of the
individual producers, with regard both to their labour and to its
products, are in this case perfectly simple and intelligible, and that
with regard not only to production but also to distribution.
The religious world is but the reflex of the real world. And for a
society based upon the production of commodities, in which the producers
in general enter into social relations with one another by treating
their products as commodities and values, whereby they reduce their
individual private labour to the standard of homogeneous human labour
for such a society, Christianity with its cultus of abstract man, more
especially in its bourgeois developments, Protestantism, Deism, &c., is
the most fitting form of religion. In the ancient Asiatic and other
ancient modes of production, we find that the conversion of products
into commodities, and therefore the conversion of men into producers of
commodities, holds a subordinate place, which, however, increases in
importance as the primitive communities approach nearer and nearer to
their dissolution. Trading nations, properly so called, exist in the
ancient world only in its interstices, like the gods of Epicurus in the
Intermundia, or like Jews in the pores of Polish society. Those ancient
social organisms of production are, as compared with bourgeois society,
extremely simple and transparent. But they are founded either on the
immature development of man individually, who has not yet severed the
umbilical cord that unites him with his fellowmen in a primitive tribal
community, or upon direct relations of subjection. They can arise and
exist only when the development of the productive power of labour has
not risen beyond a low stage, and when, therefore, the social relations
within the sphere of material life, between man and man, and between man
and Nature, are correspondingly narrow. This narrowness is reflected in
the ancient worship of Nature, and in the other elements of the popular
religions. The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only
then finally vanish, when the practical relations of every-day life
offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations
with regard to his fellowmen and to Nature.
The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material
production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as
production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by
them in accordance with a settled plan. This, however, demands for
society a certain material ground-work or set of conditions of existence
which in their turn are the spontaneous product of a long and painful
process of development.
Political Economy has indeed analysed, however incompletely,(32) value
and its magnitude, and has discovered what lies beneath these forms. But
it has never once asked the question why labour is represented by the
value of its product and labour-time by the magnitude of that
value.(33) These formulae, which bear it stamped upon them in
unmistakable letters that they belong to a state of society, in which
the process of production has the mastery over man, instead of being
controlled by him, such formulae appear to the bourgeois intellect to be
as much a self-evident necessity imposed by Nature as productive labour
itself. Hence forms of social production that preceded the bourgeois
form, are treated by the bourgeoisie in much the same way as the Fathers
of the Church treated pre-Christian religions.(34)
To what extent some economists are misled by the Fetishism inherent in
commodities, or by the objective appearance of the social
characteristics of labour, is shown, amongst other ways, by the dull and
tedious quarrel over the part played by Nature in the formation of
exchange-value. Since exchange-value is a definite social manner of
expressing the amount of labour bestowed upon an object, Nature has no
more to do with it, than it has in fixing the course of exchange.
The mode of production in which the product takes the form of a
commodity, or is produced directly for exchange, is the most general and
most embryonic form of bourgeois production. It therefore makes its
appearance at an early date in history, though not in the same
predominating and characteristic manner as now-a-days. Hence its Fetish
character is comparatively easy to be seen through. But when we come to
more concrete forms, even this appearance of simplicity vanishes. Whence
arose the illusions of the monetary system? To it gold and silver, when
serving as money, did not represent a social relation between producers,
but were natural objects with strange social properties. And modern
economy, which looks down with such disdain on the monetary system, does
not its superstition come out as clear as noon-day, whenever it treats
of capital? How long is it since economy discarded the physiocratic
illusion, that rents grow out of the soil and not out of society?
But not to anticipate, we will content ourselves with yet another
example relating to the commodity-form. Could commodities themselves
speak, they would say: Our use-value may be a thing that interests men.
It is no part of us as objects. What, however, does belong to us as
objects, is our value. Our natural intercourse as commodities proves it.
In the eyes of each other we are nothing but exchange-values. Now listen
how those commodities speak through the mouth of the economist. "Value"
(i.e., exchange-value) "is a property of things, riches" (i.e., use-
value) "of man. Value, in this sense, necessarily implies exchanges,
riches do not."(35) "Riches" (use-value) "are the attribute of men,
value is the attribute of commodities. A man or a community is rich, a
pearl or a diamond is valuable... A pearl or a diamond is valuable" as a
pearl or a diamond.(36) So far no chemist has ever discovered
exchange-value either in a pearl or a diamond. The economic discoverers
of this chemical element, who by-the-by lay special claim to critical
acumen, find however that the use-value of objects belongs to them
independently of their material properties, while their value, on the
other hand, forms a part of them as objects. What confirms them in this
view, is the peculiar circumstance that the use-value of objects is
realised without exchange, by means of a direct relation between the
objects and man, while, on the other hand, their value is realised only
by exchange, that is, by means of a social process. Who fails here to
call to mind our good friend, Dogberry, who informs neighbour Seacoal,
that, "To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but reading and
writing comes by Nature."(37)
