Introduction
Before the concept of labour and labour power can be properly understood, it is important to first grasp the concept of the commodity. Commodity-money relations are a key feature of the capitalist economy, since virtually everything — fruits, machines, and so on — becomes practically a commodity under capitalism.
We are constantly surrounded by commodities, which are the most widespread phenomenon and, consequently, the most elementary unit of wealth in capitalist society. In other words, commodities are the economic "cells" of capitalism. By exchanging commodities, people enter into definite economic relationships — some as sellers, others as buyers. Commodity exchange is the most large-scale and common relationship in capitalist society; buying and selling occur daily, millions of times over. What, then, precisely is a commodity?
 |
| An African market |
What Is a Commodity?
Dealing with commodities every day, we tend to think of them simply as material things — and indeed, most commodities are material things: goods sold in a store such as clothing and footwear, machinery and equipment purchased by a factory to expand production, or weapons purchased by the military. However, many things we obtain for free are also material things — fruit plucked in the forest, or gifts given as presents — yet these are not commodities. It is therefore inadequate to define a commodity simply as a "thing." Things as such are not commodities; they only become commodities once people act upon them in a particular way. To be a commodity, a thing must be produced for exchange and for sale. More precisely, a commodity is a product of labour that passes from producer to consumer not directly, but through an act of exchange — a purchase and sale.
Two Conditions Governing Commodity Production
1. The social division of labour
2. The private ownership of the means of production
With the transition to capitalism, commodity production acquired a universal and dominant character. In a capitalist enterprise, all products of labour are goods for sale — and under capitalism, labour power itself is also a commodity.
Use Value
The use value of a commodity centres on the fact that every commodity is produced to satisfy a specific human want or need. Bread, meat, milk, fruit, and vegetables all serve to satisfy man's requirement for food. Shoes, boots, books, shirts, trousers, suits, coats, and hijabs are produced to satisfy the requirement for clothing and footwear. Machines and other equipment serve production needs, while books and pictures satisfy man's cultural demands.
The ability to satisfy human needs is therefore a necessary and indispensable attribute of a commodity — this attribute is called its use value. No one would think of buying a commodity that has no use value. The use value of a commodity results from both its natural properties and the properties imparted to it by the labour process. For instance, a knife used to cut bread is useful not only because it is hard (a natural property of the metal it is made from), but also because of the sharpness man has given it during production. Use value therefore embodies both natural substance and labour expenditure — nature and labour together produce use value.
The use value of commodities develops and diversifies as human society develops and as people come to understand the properties of things and the diversity of their applications. Wood, once used mainly for dwellings and household items, is now used for many other purposes, especially paper production. Oil, whose sole application was once fuel, is now an indispensable raw material for producing many synthetic materials.
Three Conditions of the Use Value of a Commodity
1. The use value of a commodity satisfies not only the wants of its producer, but the wants of other members of society. The commodity is not intended for the person who produced it, but for the person who will buy it. A fashion designer who makes shirts, trousers, or hijabs to sell does not intend them for personal use. Likewise, the use value of leather produced at a manufacturing plant satisfies the production needs of the enterprises that buy it, not the needs of the plant that produced it. The use value of a commodity is thus a social use value, intended for society.
2. The use value of a commodity is only realized after exchange — through the act of purchase and sale. A customer can only use an umbrella after purchasing it; while it remains in the factory storehouse or department store, its use value cannot be realized.
3. The use value of a commodity is the materialized expression of its value — another essential quality of a commodity. The value of a commodity is expressed through a definite exchange ratio: every commodity is exchangeable for a certain sum of money, or for a corresponding quantity of other goods (for example, one television set may exchange for the value of ten shelves). All these are products of human labour. Since the production of any commodity involves labour expenditure, and every commodity embodies labour expenditure, labour input is the essential common factor across all commodities. The exchange of commodities is essentially a comparison of the amounts of labour embodied in them — in other words, value is the producer's labour embodied in a commodity. Commodities are made comparable through the total labour embodied in them, and it is by comparing labour inputs that the values of different commodities can be compared.
The Contradiction Between Use Value and Value
Secondly, use value concerns the utilization of a commodity, while value concerns its exchange — and no one can benefit from both qualities in the same commodity at once. The realization of one automatically rules out the realization of the other. For example, a shoemaker who wears shoes he has made himself realizes their use value, but in doing so cannot realize their value — to realize the value, he must sell them, at which point their use value passes out of his reach and into the hands of the buyer, who realizes it by wearing them.
Thirdly, since a commodity cannot be realized simultaneously as use value and as value, there is a certain priority in the realization of these two qualities: a commodity is first realized as value, and only afterward as use value. This priority contains an inner contradiction — to be realized as value, a commodity must be sold, and for it to be sold, a customer must be convinced that it has use value and will be useful to him. This contradiction generates a series of conflicts in practice. A commodity may be damaged in storage or become unfashionable, and so fail to sell — in which case its use value goes unrealized, and this in turn impedes the realization of its value. In other cases, a commodity may be unmarketable due to its price, or because the owner declines to sell at the prevailing market price. In each such case, when the commodity fails to reach the consumer, the labour embodied in it is wasted.
Conclusion
The commodity, then, is the elementary economic unit of capitalist society, defined not merely as a material thing but as a product of labour created for exchange. Its dual character — as use value, which satisfies human needs, and as value, which reflects the labour embodied in it and enables exchange — generates the contradictions that drive the movement of commodities through the market. Understanding this dual nature of the commodity is the necessary foundation for grasping labour power as a commodity in its own right under capitalism.
0 Comments