";s:4:"text";s:3872:" We are not aware of this, nevertheless we do it. Form B shows that only one single commodity at a time can completely expand its relative value, and that it acquires this expanded form only because, and in so far as, all other commodities are, with respect to it, equivalents. The proportions in which they are exchangeable, whatever those proportions may be, can always be represented by an equation in which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of iron: e.g., 1 quarter corn = x cwt. A single commodity, the linen, appears therefore to have acquired the character of direct exchangeability with every other commodity because, and in so far as, this character is denied to every other commodity. They are forms of thought expressing with social validity the conditions and relations of a definite, historically determined mode of production, viz., the production of commodities. By expressing the magnitudes of their values in one and the same material, the linen, those magnitudes are also compared with each other For instance, 10 Ibs. When looked at as crystals of this social substance, common to them all, they are Values. They are allotted respectively to the two different commodities brought into relation by that expression. A commodity may be the product of the most skilled labour, but its value, by equating it to the product of simple unskilled labour, represents a definite quantity of the latter labour alone. Each commodity, such as, coat, tea, corn, iron, &c., figures in the expression of value of the linen, as an equivalent, and, consequently, as a thing that is value. How long is it since economy discarded the physiocratic illusion, that rents grow out of the soil and not out of society? Since the relative form of value of a commodity the linen, for example expresses the value of that commodity, as being something wholly different from its substance and properties, as being, for instance, coat-like, we see that this expression itself indicates that some social relation lies at the bottom of it.
Consequently it was the analysis of the prices of commodities that alone led to the determination of the magnitude of value, and it was the common expression of all commodities in money that alone led to the establishment of their characters as values. The relative form of the value of the linen pre-supposes, therefore, the presence of some other commodity here the coat under the form of an equivalent. The character of having value, when once impressed upon products, obtains fixity only by reason of their acting and re-acting upon each other as quantities of value.
Consequently much labour is represented in a small compass. Every commodity, whose value it is intended to express, is a useful object of given quantity, as 15 bushels of corn, or 100 Ibs. Here, the one stands forth in its character of value by reason of its relation to the other. But this is a mere quantitative difference, which for the present does not concern us. What is that equal something, that common substance, which admits of the value of the beds being expressed by a house? The equalisation of the most different kinds of labour can be the result only of an abstraction from their inequalities, or of reducing them to their common denominator, viz. Such are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, &c. A thing can be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a commodity.