CHAPTER II.

solving it, he imagined that commodities could be related directly to each other as products of social labor. But they can relate to each other only in their capacity of commodities. Commodities are the direct products of isolated independent private labors, which have to be realized as universal social labor through their alienation in the process of private exchange, that is to say, labor based on the production of commodities becomes social labor only through universal alienation of individual labors. But by assuming that the labor-time contained in commodities is directly social labor-time, Gray assumes it to be common labor-time or labor-time of directly associated individuals. Under such conditions a specific commodity like gold or silver could not confront other commodities as the incarnation of universal labor, and exchange value would not be turned into price; but, on the other hand, use-value would not become exchange value, products would not become commodities and thus the very foundation of the capitalistic system of production would be removed. But that is not what Gray has in mind. *Products are to be produced as commodities, but are not to be exchanged as