or to all others in the market. The ultimate issue of the various expressions of value is the money-form: but in the words of Marx the step to the money-form “consists in this alone, that the character of direct and universal exchangeability—in other words, that the universal equivalent form—has now by 234 social custom become identified with the substance gold.”
The second chapter deals with exchange. Exchange, says Marx, presupposes guardians or owners of commodities, since these cannot go to market of themselves. An article possesses for the owner no use-value where he seeks to exchange it: if it did, he would not seek to exchange it. “All commodities,” says Marx, “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.”
Commodities, then, find their universal value represented by one commodity from among them, which has in itself no use-value unless it be that of embodying and of symbolising the abstract quality of value.
Chapter III. deals with the circulation of commodities under the money-form. 235 Here Marx very justly observes, “It 1s because all commodities as values are realised human labour, and therefore commensurable, that their values can be measured by one and the same special commodity, and the latter be converted into the common measure of their values—i.e. into money. Money as a measure of value is the phenomenal form that must of necessity be assumed by that measure of value which is immanent in commodities, labour-time.”
This long and important chapter proceeds to discuss the theory of circulating money or of currency at considerable length and in great detail.