CHAPTER I. COMMODITIES.

so far as it is applied to the production of use-values as of the only source of wealth, namely, the material wealth produced by it. Being an activity intended to adapt materials to this or that purpose, it requires matter as a pre-requisite. In different use-values the proportion between labor and raw material varies greatly, but use-value always has a natural substratum. Labor, as an activity, directed to the adaptation of raw material in one form or another, is a natural condition of human existence, a condition of exchange of matter between man and nature, independent of all social forms. On the contrary, labor producing exchange value is a specifically social form of labor. Tailoring, e. g., in its material manifestation as a distinct productive activity, produces a coat, but not the exchange value of the coat. The latter is produced not by the labor of the tailor as such, but by abstract universal labor, and that belongs to a certain organization of society which has not been brought about by the tailor. Thus, the women under the ancient system of house industry made coats without producing the exchange value of the coats. Labor as a source of material wealth was known to Moses, the legislator, as well as to Adam Smith, the customs official.⁹