It has been a month since the last post, and due to the deterioration of my mental state, I gradually gave up on writing articles. I now plan to update again, as per the topic.
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The General Concept of Commodities
Firstly, a commodity is a labor product used for exchange. It is an “object outside” — a “thing that directly satisfies a certain human need based on its own qualities”; it is a product produced in a society of “more or less separated private producers,” which means initially private products. However, only when these private products are not for personal consumption but for the consumption of others—i.e., for social consumption—do they become commodities; they enter social consumption through exchange. In this way, private producers are interconnected within social relations, forming a society." Therefore, “a commodity is such a thing — on one hand, it can satisfy people’s certain needs; on the other hand, it can be used to exchange for other things.” From this, we can conclude that the essence of a commodity is nothing more than the social relations between people concealed under the “object outside”.
For an item to qualify as a commodity, it must meet the following conditions:
- It is based on a society with a commodity economy.
- It possesses properties that can satisfy certain human needs.
- It is produced through human labor.
- It can be exchanged with other labor products in the form of buying and selling.
- It is a labor product “for others” “for society” to consume.
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The dual attributes of commodities.
First, use value
- The qualitative attributes of use value.
Use value, that is, the usefulness of an item, which refers to its property of satisfying certain needs of people [ :The issue here is not whether the material satisfies needs directly as everyday consumer goods or indirectly as means of production], is the use value of the object. All items necessary for human material life—whether directly as living materials for consumption or indirectly as means of production—possess some form of usefulness.
Marx said: “The usefulness of a thing makes it a use value.” Different commodities, due to their distinct material properties, possess unique usefulness, forming their respective use values; moreover, each item’s usefulness, because of its material nature, can be multifaceted, and thus it has multiple uses for people. “Each such thing is a sum of many properties, so it can be useful in different aspects.” Its multifaceted use value is gradually discovered through human struggle with nature, as production experience accumulates, technological advancements are made, and scientific knowledge increases.
[：For example, for a long historical period, people only knew to use wood as fuel, construction material, for making tools and furniture, but now, due to developments in science and technology, wood has found extensive applications in social and economic life, totaling thousands of uses. Similar situations exist for utilization of various mineral products, agricultural products, and even some wild plants.]
To survive and develop, humanity must constantly produce various items to meet various needs. Therefore, the category of use value exists throughout human history, regardless of social form; it is an eternal natural category reflecting the relationship between humans and objects, not mirroring any social relations of production. Because regardless of the social form, people always regard items with use value—things that can meet material needs— as wealth, so “regardless of the form of wealth, use value always constitutes the material content of wealth.” The use value of an item is a material attribute inherent in the item itself, present within the item’s body, not an abstract entity. “It depends on the properties of the commodity, and without the commodity, it does not exist. Therefore, items like wheat, iron, diamonds, etc., are use values or wealth.”
All commodities’ use value is created through human labor in conjunction with nature, transforming it into useful things. However, the degree of usefulness “has no relation to the amount of labor spent to labor that acquires its use properties.” The usefulness of each kind of object can only be realized when people use and consume it, so the attribute of use value is realized in consumption (or usage). “Use value is only realized during use or consumption.” When examining use value solely through its usage and consumption process, its material properties are always the same in any social form. Therefore, it cannot reflect social production relations. Marx pointed out: “Although use value is a social product that meets social needs, it does not reflect any social relations of production.”
Every commodity must first possess some use value to satisfy a need before it can be exchanged with other commodities; without use value, it has no demand and thus cannot be a commodity. Therefore, “for a commodity, possessing use value is a necessary prerequisite.” Thus, use value is a property or factor that every commodity must have. However, even if an item has some use value, it does not necessarily become a commodity. Because, as a commodity, the use value it possesses is of no use to its producer or seller; it only has use value for non-producers and buyers. In other words, the use value of a commodity is intended for others’ use, for social use, not for the producer’s own consumption. It is not provided gratuitously to landlords like rent, but must be exchanged with another commodity—via commodity exchange—to be used and consumed by others. Because of this, the use value as a property of a commodity must be based on the existence of the commodity economic system and social conditions, forming an antithetical unity with exchange value in the dual nature of commodities. Therefore, viewing use value from the perspective of a commodity-based society reveals that “use value also acts as the material carrier of exchange value.”
- The quantitative regulation of use value.
Every commodity’s use value has a specific measurement unit, its regulation partly based on the material characteristics of the use value, and partly on social conventions formed historically. Marx said: “The reason for the different standards of commodities is partly due to the different nature of the measured objects, and partly due to customary conventions.” He also said: “When examining use value, it is always presupposed to have a certain quantity, such as dozens of meters of cloth, tons of iron, etc.”
- Use value as the object of commodity science
Because use value is constituted by natural factors—physical and chemical—that are inherent to it, and its functioning and effectiveness are also determined by these natural factors, it is a category of material attributes that does not reflect social relations of production. Thus, it is an object of study in the specialized technical discipline of commodity science, and does not fall within the scope of political economy. Marx said: “The use value of a commodity provides the material for commodity science.” In Marx’s “Critique of Political Economy” it also says: “Use value that is irrelevant to economic form—namely, use value as use value—does not belong to the scope of political economy.”
[ ：All the above are excerpts from: Marx, “Capital,” Volume I.]
This content summarizes other works; I find it very good, so I haven’t made many modifications.
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