CHAPTER I. COMMODITIES.

exchange value and from the fact that social labor becomes universal labor. E. g., commodities as use-values can not be subdivided at will, a property which they should possess as exchange values. Or, a commodity belonging to A may be a use-value to B, while the commodity belonging to B may not have any use-value to A. Or the owners of the commodities may need each other’s indivisible goods in unequal proportions. In other words, under the pretence of analyzing simple barter, economists bring out certain aspects of the contradiction which is inherent in commodities as entities simultaneously embodying both use-value and exchange value. On the other hand, they consistently cling to the idea that barter is the natural form of exchange, which suffers only from certain technical difficulties, for which money is a cunningly devised expedient. Arguing from this perfectly superficial view, an ingenious English economist has rightly maintained that money is merely a material instrument like a ship or a steam-engine, but not an expression of a social relation in the field of production and consequently not an economic category; and that it is, therefore, wrong to treat the subject in political