CHAPTER I. COMMODITIES.

different value in different hands, e. g., it has a different value in the hands of the one who disposes of it, than in those of the one who acquires it. But the commodity singled out as the universal equivalent, is now an object of a universal want arising from the very process of exchange, and it has the same use-value to everybody, viz., that of serving as the depository of exchange value, of being a universal means of exchange. Thus we find in one commodity the solution of the contradiction which is inherent in commodity as such, namely, of being at one and the same time a particular use-value and a universal equivalent, and, therefore, a use-value for everybody or universal use-value. Thus, while all other commodities express their exchange value in the form of an ideal equation with the excluded commodity—an equation yet to be realized—the use-value of the special commodity, although real, appears in the process itself as a mere form which is yet to be realized through transformation into actual use-values. Originally the commodity appeared simply as commodity, as universal labor-time embodied in a particular use-value. In the process of exchange, all commodities are related to the one excluded commodity as to a simple commodity, one which appears as the embodiment of universal labor-time in a particular use-value. Thus, particular commodities become related to one particular commodity as a universal commodity.¹³ In that manner the mutual relations of possessors of commodities based on the fact that they regard their labor as universal social labor, takes on the aspect of their relations to commodities as exchange values; and the mutual relation of commodities as exchange values appears in the process of exchange as the relation of all of them to one particular commodity as to a specially adopted means of expression of their exchange value; again, from the point of view of that particular commodity the above relation appears as its specific relation to all other commodities, and, therefore, as its own definite, spontaneous, social character. The particular commodity which thus appears as the specially adopted expression of the exchange value of all other commodities, or the exchange value of