The same as three years ago, I once read through this book “Introduction to Political Economy” in a superficial way, without careful thought and research into its content, only roughly understanding concepts like surplus value theory and credit, and I haven’t reviewed it regularly since then. Recently, when trying to analyze and comment on news, I found that I almost can’t analyze some economic news accurately and quickly, so I thought of supplementing my theoretical foundation in this area. I will try to update together with my reading notes on “Outline of Marxist Philosophy”.
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In the first section, I suggest reading it together with Nankai Ben, as it is more helpful for understanding the internal contradictions of commodities. Also, you can indeed take a look at “Capital,” it’s interesting.
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Okay, then the second part of the product two-factor section will start to be combined with Nankai to take a look together afterward.
(First Chapter, Section One, 2025.02.26)
The commodity is the simplest and most abstract category in the capitalist economic system. From simple to complex, Marx’s analysis of the capitalist economic system begins here.
The commodity is the most common and universal phenomenon in capitalist society, and it indeed is. Whether it’s going to the breakfast shop in the morning to buy food, such as buns and steamed bread, these are commodities; almost everything used in daily life is bought and is a commodity. Life cannot be lived without commodities. There were commodities before capitalism, but they were not common or not the main form of production. For example, in feudal times, landlords and manor owners could directly take the food from farmers without paying, with no exchange, no “business,” and naturally no commodities; during slavery times, it was even more so, as the slaves’ produce was directly taken by the slave owners.
As for why the analysis doesn’t start from the concepts of class, wage labor, and capital, it’s clearly explained in the book, so I won’t copy it here.
I believe the main point is that the commodity itself contains the芽 of contradictions in capitalist society. It only mentions that commodities are the most universal here, but the reading notes overlook the question of why Marx started his research method with commodities.
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You are right. In fact, the overview mentions why the study of the relations of production in capitalism begins with commodities. The first point is that “commodities are the most common and widespread phenomenon in capitalist society,” progressing from simple to complex, from abstract to concrete. This way of studying is more reasonable; it is not possible to grasp everything at once. Moreover, commodities and commodity exchange appeared long before capitalism, and capital itself developed from the transformation of commodity exchange into money. The production of capitalism originally developed in the late feudal society when commodity production and circulation had already made some progress. Therefore, from a historical perspective, it should also start with commodities.
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（Chapter 1, Section 2, 2025.02.28）
A commodity is first and foremost a thing that satisfies needs. This is easy to understand because we also wouldn’t buy things we don’t need — what we buy must be things that we need materially or spiritually. This usefulness is the use value of the commodity. However, useful things are not necessarily commodities; for example, when I disassemble and assemble furniture using materials at hand to make a convenient tool, that tool is useful, but I didn’t buy it from anyone. A commodity is a product produced by a group of people for others to use. But this is not enough, because things produced by slaves are also for their masters’ use, yet there is no buying and selling involved. So ultimately, a commodity must be a useful item produced for others and exchanged through buying and selling.
Furthermore, commodities have not only use value but also exchange value. Exchange value is expressed as the ratio of the amount of one use value exchanged for another. For example, 50 jin of rice can be exchanged for 10 jin of mutton, so two popsicles are the exchange value of 50 jin of rice in this relation. This exchange value can fluctuate, but such fluctuations do not mean that exchange value is purely accidental. In fact, just as in mathematics the two sides of an equation must be equal, since we are willing to exchange, it must mean that what we exchange is equal; otherwise, we wouldn’t be willing to do so and would feel it’s a “loss.”
This leads to the question of how these exchanged items are “equal.” The book clearly explains that because these things are the result of human labor, the reason they can be exchanged is that people have exerted an equivalent amount of human labor on them, or in other words, they have equivalent value (the previously mentioned exchange value is just a form of value). However, I suddenly thought of a question: for example, (personal experience) in elementary school, a classmate asked another classmate to copy answers, exchanging a popsicle for a day’s worth of answers. Is this considered an equivalent exchange? After all, it seems that the time and effort spent on a day’s answers are more than a popsicle (which was even bought with parents’ money). I find this confusing.
The use value and value of a commodity are dialectically unified: their unity is reflected in the condition that both exist. For example, useless things, no matter how much labor is invested in them, are useless; no one would buy them. But if obtaining something requires no labor and has no value, it cannot become a commodity. For example, air — everyone can breathe it, so how can it become a commodity? (This also indirectly shows how ridiculous it is that in a science fiction novel, Liu Cixin mentioned that air became a commodity). The opposition is that those who produce and use the commodity pursue its value because they want to sell it, so they care less about its use value. Giving up use value is necessary to pursue value. Because of this, poor-quality commodities are okay — as long as they have some use and can be sold for profit (the book later discusses why commodities inherently contain the seeds of contradictions in capitalist society, which I will write about separately). But I also find it hard to understand why these two are contradictory; I seek your explanation.
This is not commodity exchange either; after the homework is written, it’s just shown to others, nor is it helping to write a day’s homework or copying a day’s homework.
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Indeed, and it also seems that homework can’t be considered too much of a commodity?
Moreover, the homework itself has answers; doing homework isn’t really labor. If the other person has the answers and gives you a copy to copy, then takes your popsicle, it becomes a monopoly (
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It seems you’ve already said it earlier? Because to realize the value of goods, you have to sell the goods, transferring the use value of the goods to the buyer, and then obtain the corresponding value. To obtain the use value of a certain good, you also have to transfer the corresponding value to the seller
Selling homework (essays, etc.) in the form of commodities to obtain exchange value is what makes it a commodity, but generally no one would do this.
I believe that, in the situation you described, the exchange of answers and popsicles is not an equivalent exchange because an equivalent exchange is a rule followed in commodity exchange, and answers here are not commodities; commodities must have use value and value. It can be said that answers have some kind of use value, but they do not have value. This is because students generally do not sell answers to transform use value into value. In other words, the activity of doing homework does not create value. The answer given by a student to another should only be the “right to use” the answer. In return, the latter pays with a popsicle. Moreover, the popsicle here is not used as a “medium of circulation” for purchasing goods, but as a “means of payment” representing wealth (the quotation marks are used because the popsicle is not money; this is an analogy).
If it is not about exchanging a ready-made homework for a popsicle, but about paying someone to do homework, then it can be said that a commodity exchange has occurred. In this case, the person hired provides the service of doing homework and its use value. In other words, his commodity is the activity of doing homework itself. Thus, an equivalent exchange occurs, but the cost paid by the employer is not equal to the actual amount of labor the employed person puts in, but equal to the value of his labor power—“The value of services of non-productive laborers is determined by, and can be determined by, the same method (or similar method) that determines the value of productive labor. That is, it is determined by the production costs necessary to sustain their lives or to produce them.” (Marx: “Capital,” Volume 4.) Of course, this does not mean that there is exploitation of the employed by the employer in this case, because the former’s pursuit is not the value or surplus value contained in the answer (since answers here are not commodities and do not have value or surplus value in fact), but the usefulness of the answer that can be handed over to the teacher. What he pays is not capital, but money or income—“Buying cloth and hiring a tailor to make trousers at home, I pay him for his service (i.e., his sewing labor)… not turning the money I use to buy trousers into capital, but into trousers… simply using money as a means of circulation, i.e., transforming money into a certain use value.” (Marx: “Capital,” Volume 4.)
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Indeed, ghostwriting is completely different from borrowing someone else’s finished work to copy. Ghostwriting is definitely a commodity exchange.
Indeed, it is clearly unreasonable to say that the value of such a service is equal to how much labor the employed person actually puts in.
Además, también quiero hacer una pregunta sobre economía política: ¿el valor en sí mismo tiene utilidad? Decir esto puede parecer muy abstracto; en pocas palabras, la producción de algunos bienes por parte de los productores generalmente se realiza para obtener valor, y la razón por la que obtienen valor es para usar el dinero (el dinero en sí mismo es tanto material como mercancía, también tiene utilidad, pero en última instancia, ¿esto es la utilidad del dinero en sí o la utilidad del valor?) para comprar otros productos laborales que tengan utilidad para el productor de ese bien. Entonces, en esta situación, ¿la acción del productor de bienes para obtener valor puede considerarse que el dinero tiene una gran utilidad para él?
Pero en la introducción se dice que la utilidad es “la propiedad natural de las cosas”, una propiedad inherente a todas las cosas, pero desde otra perspectiva, la utilidad también es un concepto de la sociedad humana. Esta utilidad está determinada por las diversas necesidades de las personas, por lo que creo que la utilidad también refleja algunas propiedades sociales. Volviendo al tema principal, el valor es una propiedad social, y la producción de valor solo puede ser resultado del trabajo, por lo que varios bienes adquieren diferentes cantidades de valor. Por lo tanto, esta cuestión de si el “valor en sí mismo tiene utilidad” me ha estado confundiendo durante mucho tiempo, ya que no puedo entenderla bien; ambos son una unidad de oposición y también una relación insustituible.
The use value is determined by the natural attributes of the commodity, and how commodities with different natural attributes can be utilized is related to the mode of production. In any case, the fact that natural attributes determine the use value of a commodity will not change. There are qualitative differences between different natural attributes, and there are also qualitative differences in their use values, which cannot be compared quantitatively. It must be clarified which specific commodity it is in order to determine its use value.
So, your question itself is incorrect. You are asking about the use value of value, but is value a specific commodity? Clearly not. Since it is not, how can we talk about use value? You later mentioned currency. Although currency is a commodity, it is not a specific commodity; it is a social relation between people, just as commodities are social relations between people. Therefore, it is also meaningless to talk about the use value of currency. You can discuss the use value of precious metals like gold and silver bars or coins, which are often used as currency, or the use value of paper money, which is related to their natural form.
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I forgot that “the natural property of commodities is use value,” so the latter parts are no longer valid, and the discussion about the “use value” of “things” has been brought up.
Of course, you can talk about the use value of currency, but when you do, you also cannot avoid specific forms of currency—coins, gold bars, banknotes, etc.
Recently, my mental state has had some issues, and I have spent a lot of time on personal enjoyment and low-level interests, which has led to insufficient effort in the revolutionary aspect (this also once again shows that for revolutionaries, revolution is life; if you focus on personal interests, you won’t do well in revolutionary matters). Theoretical study has also fallen behind, and my reading notes have not been updated. Now I realize the mistake of doing so, and I need to re-commit to efforts in all aspects, persist in theoretical study, and continue to update.
(Chapter 1, Section 3, 2025.03.16)
Different commodities have different uses (use value), and what determines the different use values of commodities is the different types of concrete labor. For example, without blacksmithing and forging labor, there would be no iron tools, even if other types of labor (such as in pottery or carpentry) are well-developed, they are useless. To distinguish different types of labor, we should differentiate from the entire labor process: look at the purpose, object, tools used, operation methods, and results of the labor.
However, commodities also have an abstract value besides their specific use value, which we mentioned above. The natural counterpart to this abstract value is abstract human labor—whether you are forging iron, sawing wood, or debugging rocket engines, all these activities count as human labor. From here, we can see the source of use value and value in commodities—specific human labor and abstract human labor. These are the two aspects of human labor, corresponding to the two factors of commodities, more precisely, the dual nature of labor determines the two factors of commodities.
However, abstract labor manifests as value in commodities, but this does not mean it always manifests as value everywhere. For example, during the slave era, slaves also produced things through human labor, but slave owners did not pay them. Here, the human abstract labor does not manifest as value—there is no equivalent exchange. (However, I am not sure what the abstract labor of slaves manifests as, whether it is reflected in their relationship with the slave owners, such as capable slaves being ‘treated better’ and incapable slaves being killed? Not very clear. But at that time, there was also commodity exchange, and during exchange, human abstract labor must have also manifested in the form of value.)
Furthermore, since commodity exchange is based on equal value, how do we measure the amount of value? Certainly not by use value, as different use values are not comparable. It cannot be based on the complexity or simplicity of labor or the rarity of the produced items, because these are subjective. However, one thing is objective: the length of labor (more complex labor can be regarded as longer in terms of the amount of simple labor involved). Therefore, the amount of value is measured by the length of labor time (this reminds me of a vulgar saying, “things are more valuable when rare,” which some use to explain why some things can exchange for more others. Now we know that valuable things contain more labor, and rarity just means more labor has been invested, although sometimes common things can also be very expensive. But there are other situations, which I will not discuss here for now, but will talk about later.) Because of different levels of skill among workers, the same product takes different times to produce for different people, with some being faster and some slower. But those who are less skilled and take longer do not earn more. The market price or the amount of value of a product depends not only on the labor time but also on the social necessary labor time (definition omitted here; social necessary labor time varies with labor productivity), which is based on an average level of technology and labor. This determines that those who work slowly or poorly earn less or even lose money—if their labor time exceeds the social necessary labor time, their goods cannot be sold or cannot fully recover their labor costs. Conversely, those who work faster earn more and do not lose—selling at the social necessary labor time yields a value greater than their labor costs.
From here, we can see that exchanging commodities is not just a simple exchange of objects but a labor exchange between different producers to survive. Commodities are actually social relations among producers. The book states an important sentence: “Due to the contradiction between private labor and social labor, the social nature of producers’ labor cannot be directly expressed, so their mutual exchange of labor takes the form of value, the form of commodities.” This is crucial. The contradiction between private labor and social labor exists under private ownership: production of commodities is private labor, carried out by an individual or a company, but the produced commodities are indeed used by others in society. This condition of private ownership is different from collective labor under public ownership: for example, during primitive communal periods, individual labor was part of collective labor, so after labor, both oneself and others could directly use the products produced collectively, without exchange, and there was no contradiction between private and social labor. But under private ownership, although what I produce is used by society and others, we are not a collective, so you cannot directly take mine and I yours; that would be a loss, so exchange is necessary. Therefore, labor exchange is no longer direct but involves commodity exchange (not sure if this understanding is correct; I will attach a screenshot from a Nankai edition book later, which I find very helpful for understanding).
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Understanding these two feelings is more helpful for understanding the internal contradictions of commodities, and it will feel like “enlightenment”.
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