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Chapter 1
one as an odd thing for any one to suppose that these well-worn phrases about the middle ages and the
ancient world are unknown to anyone else. This much, however, is clear, that the middle ages could
not live on Catholicism, nor the ancient world on politics. On the contrary, it is the mode in which
they gained a livelihood that explains why here politics, and there Catholicism, played the chief part.
For the rest, it requires but a slight acquaintance with the history of the Roman republic, for example,
to be aware that its secret history is the history of its landed property. On the other hand, Don Quixote
long ago paid the penalty for wrongly imagining that knight errantry was compatible with all
economic forms of society.
35
“Observations on certain verbal disputes in Pol. Econ., particularly relating to value and to demand
and supply” Lond., 1821, p. 16.
36
S. Bailey, l.c., p. 165.
37
The author of “Observations” and S. Bailey accuse Ricardo of converting exchange value from
something relative into something absolute. The opposite is the fact. He has explained the apparent
relation between objects, such as diamonds and pearls, in which relation they appear as exchange
values, and disclosed the true relation hidden behind the appearances, namely, their relation to each
other as mere expressions of human labour. If the followers of Ricardo answer Bailey somewhat
rudely, and by no means convincingly, the reason is to be sought in this, that they were unable to find
in Ricardo’s own works any key to the hidden relations existing between value and its form, exchange
value.
Chapter 2: Exchange
It is plain that commodities cannot go to market and make exchanges of their own account. We
must, therefore, have recourse to their guardians, who are also their owners. Commodities are
things, and therefore without power of resistance against man. If they are wanting in docility he
can use force; in other words, he can take possession of them.
1
In order that these objects may
enter into relation with each other as commodities, their guardians must place themselves in
relation to one another, as persons whose will resides in those objects, and must behave in such a
way that each does not appropriate the commodity of the other, and part with his own, except by
means of an act done by mutual consent. They must therefore, mutually recognise in each other
the rights of private proprietors. This juridical relation, which thus expresses itself in a contract,
whether such contract be part of a developed legal system or not, is a relation between two wills,
and is but the reflex of the real economic relation between the two. It is this economic relation
that determines the subject-matter comprised in each such juridical act.
2
The persons exist for one another merely as representatives of, and, therefore. as owners of,
commodities. In the course of our investigation we shall find, in general, that the characters who
appear on the economic stage are but the personifications of the economic relations that exist
between them.
What chiefly distinguishes a commodity from its owner is the fact, that it looks upon every other
commodity as but the form of appearance of its own value. A born leveller and a cynic, it is
always ready to exchange not only soul, but body, with any and every other commodity, be the
same more repulsive than Maritornes herself. The owner makes up for this lack in the commodity
of a sense of the concrete, by his own five and more senses. His commodity possesses for himself
no immediate use-value. Otherwise, he would not bring it to the market. It has use-value for
others; but for himself its only direct use-value is that of being a depository of exchange-value,
and, consequently, a means of exchange.
3
Therefore, he makes up his mind to part with it for
commodities whose value in use is of service to him. All commodities are non-use-values for
their owners, and use-values for their non-owners. Consequently, they must all change hands. But
this change of hands is what constitutes their exchange, and the latter puts them in relation with
each other as values, and realises them as values. Hence commodities must be realised as values
before they can be realised as use-values.
On the other hand, they must show that they are use-values before they can be realised as values.
For the labour spent upon them counts effectively, only in so far as it is spent in a form that is
useful for others. Whether that labour is useful for others, and its product consequently capable of
satisfying the wants of others, can be proved only by the act of exchange.
Every owner of a commodity wishes to part with it in exchange only for those commodities
whose use-value satisfies some want of his. Looked at in this way, exchange is for him simply a
private transaction. On the other hand, he desires to realise the value of his commodity, to convert
it into any other suitable commodity of equal value, irrespective of whether his own commodity
has or has not any use-value for the owner of the other. From this point of view, exchange is for
him a social transaction of a general character. But one and the same set of transactions cannot be
simultaneously for all owners of commodities both exclusively private and exclusively social and
general.
Let us look at the matter a little closer. To the owner of a commodity, every other commodity is,
in regard to his own, a particular equivalent, and consequently his own commodity is the