Marx starts by telling us what we will be investigating and later critiquing.
“The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,” its unit being a single commodity.”
Here he also defines Capitalism. This is more usually known as “Generalised commodity production”
Then we start analysing what IS a Commodity exactly? Throughout this chapter he tells us that a commodity is an average sample of its class, and that it has a two-fold character.
Commodities have both use-values (they are useful objects) and exchange-value. I’ll start by talking about use-value.
Use-value is often referred to by Marx as qualitative. It is the physical properties of a commodity, Marx also tells us that use-values are what constitute the “substance of wealth.” Marx also mentions how an increase in material wealth corresponds with a DECREASE in exchange-value, this has its origin in the dual-nature of a commodity.
Exchange-value is what makes a commodity a commodity, nearly everything has some use-value, but not everything has an exchange-value, so, what is it? Exchange-value exists only when commodities stand in relation to one another. It is the proportion in which the two commodities exchange. Since use-value is everything that is the physical, exchange-value cannot be. Exchange-value is characterised as being quantitative, and an abstraction from use-value (with no use-value there is no exchange-value).
Marx talks about the dual-nature of labour as well, with concrete specific labour giving rise to use-value (tailors make use-value of clothing for warmth). He says that abstract labour is the source of value, and his proofs for this are two-fold.
First he says that if x linen = y coat, then both linen and coat must be reducible to a third something, something which cannot be part of its physical traits. He proceeds to show this as being abstract labour. My preferred proof is this.
The idea that labour is the substance of value comes out more clearly when we examine the historical preconditions for the existence of value relations. For individuals to produce exchange-values, the products they produce must be use-values not to themselves but to other individuals, that is, social use-values. Labour which creates social use-values is social labour, and presupposes a social division of labour which forces individuals to rely on the production of society to satisfy their needs. However, only in certain instances of the social division of labour do the products of society appear as exchangeable values. These instances are where the various branches of the social division of labour carry out production independently of one another and for private account. In such instances, the products of labour become social through the medium of the value-form. Value serves as the substance which undertakes the natural necessity common to every society of apportioning out the labour-time of society to different branches of production in order to serve social wants. As the medium through which labour becomes social labour, we can see clearly that the essence of value is labour. In fact, to say that labour is the substance of value becomes a tautology, which is equivalent to saying that the substance of social labour is social labour.
Marx uses an example in his text to demonstrate something about value, that as production capabilities go up so that it takes half the time to produce a commodity, the commodity becomes worth half as much, this is because less human-labour time is needed.
Marx talks about 3 different forms value can take, the elementary, the expanded and the general.
The elementary has two parts. X linen (relative) = Y coats (equivalent)
The linen relatively expresses its value in the use-value of coats.
Marx expands this to show the origin of money in that all other commodities take the place of the relative role in this equation, and one other commodity becomes the equivalent, and thus money.