Contents
Section 1 – The Two Factors of a Commodity: Use-Value and Value
Section 2 – The twofold Character of the Labour Embodied in Commodities
Section 3 – The Form of Value or Exchange-Value
A. Elementary or Accidental Form of Value
1. The Two Poles of the Expression of Value: Relative Form and Equivalent Form
2. The Relative Form of Value
a. The Nature and Import of this Form
b. Quantitative Determination of Relative Value
3. The Equivalent Form of Value
4. The Elementary Form of Value Considered as a Whole
B. Total or Expanded Form of Value
1. The Expanded Relative Form of Value
2. The Particular Equivalent Form
3. Defects of the Total or Expanded Form of Value
C. The General Form of Value
1. The Altered Character of the Form of Value
2. The Interdependent Development of the Relative Form of Value, and of the Equivalent Form
3. Transition from the General Form of Value to the Money-Form
D. The Money-Form
Section 4 – The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof
SECTION 1
THE TWO FACTORS OF A COMMODITY:
USE-VALUE AND VALUE
(THE SUBSTANCE OF VALUE AND THE MAGNITUDE OF VALUE)
The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,” its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.
A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes _disibledevent= 2W.