The Online Library of Liberty

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• Editor's Note to the First American Edition By Ernest Untermann
• Author's Prefaces to the First and Second Editions, By Karl Marx
• I.—To the First Edition.
• Ii.—To the Second Edition.
• Editor's Prefaces, to the First English Translation and Fourth German Edition By Frederick Engels
• Editor's Preface to the First English Translation.
• Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition.
• Volume I. The Process of Capitalist Production.
• Book I. Capitalist Production.
• Part I. Commodities and Money.
• Part I, Chapter I Commodities.
• Section 1.—The Two Factors of a Commodity: Use-value and Value (the Substance of Value and the Magnitude of 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.
• Part I, Chapter Ii Exchange.
• Part I, Chapter Iii Money, Or the Circulation of Commodities.
• Section 1. The Measure of Values.
• Section 2.—The Medium of Circulation.
• A. the Metamorphosis of Commodities.
• B. the Currency 82 of Money.
• C. Coin and Symbols of Value.
• Section 3.—Money.
• A. Hoarding.
• B. Means of Payment.
• C. Universal Money.
• Part II. the Transformation of Money Into Capital.
• Part Ii, Chapter Iv the General Formula For Capital.
• Part Ii, Chapter V Contradictions In the General Formula of Capital.
• Part Ii, Chapter Vi the Buying and Selling of Labour-power.
• Part III. the Production of Absolute Surplus-value.
• Part Iii, Chapter Vii the Labour-process and the Process of Producing Surplus-value.
• Section 1.—The Labour-process Or the Production of Use-values.
• Section 2.—The Production of Surplus-value.
• Part Iii, Chapter Viii Constant Capital and Variable Capital
• Part Iii, Chapter Ix the Rate of Surplus-value.
• Section 1.—The Degree of Exploitation of Labour-power.
• Section 2.—The Representation of the Components of the Value of the Product By Corresponding Proportional Parts of the Product Itself.
• Section 3.—Senior's \"last Hour.\"
• Section 4.—Surplus Produce
• Part Iii, Chapter X the Working Day
• Section 1—The Limits of the Working Day
• Section 2.—The Greed For Surplus Labor, Manufacturer and Boyard
• Section 3.—Branches of English Industry Without Legal Limits to Exploitation
• Section 4.—Day and Night Work. the Relay System
• Section 5.—The Struggle For a Normal Working Day. Compulsory Laws For the Extension of the Working Day From the Middle of the 14th to the End of the 17th Century
• Section 6.—The Struggle For the Normal Working Day. Compulsory Limitation By Law of the Working Time. the English Factory Acts, 1833 to 1864.
• Section 7.—The Struggle For the Normal Working-day. Re-action of the English Acts On Other Countries.
• Part Iii, Chapter Xi Rate and Mass of Surplus-value.
• Part IV. Production of Relative Surplus-value.
• Part Iv, Chapter Xii the Concept of Relative Surplus-value.
• Part Iv, Chapter Xiii Co-operation.
• Part Iv, Chapter Xiv Division of Labour and Manufacture.
• Section 1.—Twofold Origin of Manufacture.
• Section 2.—The Detail Labourer and His Implements.
• Section 3.—The Two Fundamental Forms of Manufacture: Heterogeneous Manufacture, Serial Manufacture.
• Section 4.—Division of Labour In Manufacture, and Division of Labour In Society.
• Section 5.—The Capitalistic Character of Manufacture.
• Part Iv, Chapter Xv Machinery and Modern Industry.
• Section 1.—The Development of Machinery.
• Section 2.—The Value Transferred By Machinery to the Product
• Section 3.—The Approximate Effects of Machinery On the Workman.
• A. Appropriation of Supplementary Labour-power By Capital. the Employment of Women and Children.
• B. Prolongation of the Working-day.
• C. Intensification of Labour
• Section Iv.—The Factory
• Section 5.—The Strife Between Workman and Machine
• Section 6.—The Theory of Compensation As Regards the Workpeople Displaced By Machinery.
• Section 7.—Repulsion and Attraction of Workpeople By the Factory System. Crisis In the Cotton Trade.
• Section 8.—Revolution Effected In Manufacture, Handicrafts. and Domestic Industry By Modern Industry.
• A. Overthrow of Co-operation Based On Handicraft and On the Division of Labour.
• B. Re-action of the Factory System On Manufacture and Domestic Industries.
• C. Modern Manufacture.
• D. Modern Domestic Industry.
• E. Passage of Modern Manufacture, and Domestic Industry Into Modern Mechanical Industry. the Hastening of This Revolution By the Application of the Factory Acts to Those Industries.
• Section 9.—The Factory Acts. Sanitary and Education Clauses of the Same. Their General Extension In England.
• Section 10.—Modern Industry and Agriculture.
• Part V. the Production of Absolute and of Relative Surplus-value.
• Part V, Chapter Xvi Absolute and Relative Surplus-value.
• Part V, Chapter Xvii Changes of Magnitude In the Price of Labour-power and In Surplus-value.
• 1. Length of the Working Day and Intensity of Labour Constant. Productiveness of Labour Variable.
• II. Working-day Constant. Productiveness of Labour Constant. Intensity of Labour Variable.
• III. Productiveness and Intensity of Labour Constant. Length of the Working-day Variable.
• Iv.— Simultaneous Variations In the Duration, Productiveness, and Intensity of Labour.
• (1). Diminishing Productiveness of Labour With a Simultaneous Lengthening of the Working-day.
• (2) Increasing Intensity and Productiveness of Labour With Simultaneous Shortening of the Working-day.
• Part V, Chapter Xviii Various Formulæ For the Rate of Surplus-value.
• Part VI. Wages.
• Part Vi, Chapter Xix the Transformation of the Value (and Respectively the Price) of Labour-power Into Wages.
• Part Vi, Chapter Xx Time-wages.
• Part Vi, Chapter Xxi Piece-wages.
• Part Vi, Chapter Xxii National Differences of Wages.
• Part VII. the Accumulation of Capital.
• Part Vii, Chapter Xxiii Simple Reproduction.
• Part Vii, Chapter Xxiv Conversion of Surplus-value Into Capital.
• Section I.—Capitalist Production On a Progressively Increasing Scale. Transition of the Laws of Property That Characterise Production of Commodities Into Laws of Capitalist Appropriation.
• Section 2.—Erroneous Conception By Political Economy of Reproduction On a Progressively Increasing Scale.
• Section 3.—Separation of Surplus-value Into Capital and Revenue. the Abstinence Theory.
• Section 4.—Circumstances That, Independently of the Division of Surplus-value Into Capital and Revenue, Determine the Amount of Accumulation. Degree of Exploitation of Labour-power. Productivity of Labour. Growing Difference In Amount Between Capital Empl
• Section 5.—The So-called Labour Fund.
• Part Vii, Chapter Xxv the General Law of Capitalist Accumulation.
• Section 1.—The Increased Demand For Labour-power That Accompanies Accumulation, the Composition of Capital Remaining the Same.
• Section 2.—Relative Diminution of the Variable Part of Capital Simultaneously With the Progress of Accumulation and of the Concentration That Accompanies It.
• Section 3.—Progressive Production of a Relative Surplus-population Or Industrial Reserve Army.
• Section 4.—Different Forms of the Relative Surplus-population. the General Law of Capitalistic Accumulation.
• Section 5.—Illustrations of the General Law of Capitalist Accumulation.
• ( A. ) England From 1846-1866.
• (b). the Badly Paid Strata of the British Industrial Class.
• C. the Nomad Population.
• (d). Effect of Crises On the Best Paid Part of the Working Class.
• (e.) the British Agricultural Proletariat.
• (1.) Bedfordshire.
• (2.) Berkshire.
• (3.) Buckinghamshire.
• (4.) Cambridgeshire.
• (5.) Essex.
• (6.) Herefordshire.
• (7.) Huntingdon.
• (8.) Lincolnshire.
• (9.) Kent.
• (10.) Northamptonshire.
• (11.) Wiltshire.
• (12.) Worcestershire.
• (f.) Ireland.
• Part VIII. the So-called Primitive Accumulation.
• Part Viii, Chapter Xxvi the Secret of Primitive Accumulation.
• Part Viii, Chapter Xxvii Expropriation of the Agricultural Population From the Land.
• Part Viii, Chapter Xxviii Bloody Legislation Against the Expropriated, From the End of the 15th Century. Forcing Down of Wages By Acts of Parliament.
• Part Viii, Chapter Xxix Genesis of the Capitalist Farmer.
• Part Viii, Chapter Xxx Reaction of the Agricultural Revolution On Industry. Creation of the Home Market For Industrial Capital.
• Part Viii, Chapter Xxxi Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist.
• Part Viii, Chapter Xxxii Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation.
• Part Viii, Chapter Xxxiii the Modern Theory of Colonisation. 70
• Works and Authors Quoted In \"capital\"

C. The General form of value.

1. The altered character of the form of value.

All commodities now express their value (1) in an elementary form, because in a single commodity; (2) with unity, because in one and the same commodity. This form of value is elementary and the same for all, therefore general.

The forms A and B were fit only to express the value of a commodity as something distinct from its use-value or material form.

The first form, A, furnishes such equations as the following:—1 coat=20 yards of linen, 10 lbs. of tea=½ ton of iron. The value of the coat is equated to linen, that of the tea to iron. But to be equated to linen, and again to iron, is to be as different as are linen and iron. This form, it is plain, occurs practically only in the first beginning, when the products of labour are converted into commodities by accidental and occasional exchanges.

The second form, B, distinguishes, in a more adequate manner than the first, the value of a commodity from its use-value; for the value of the coat is there placed in contrast under all possible shapes with the bodily form of the coat; it is equated to linen, to iron, to tea, in short, to everything else, only not to itself, the coat. On the other hand, any general expression of value common to all is directly excluded; for, in the equation of value of each commodity, all other commodities now appear only under the form of equivalents. The expanded form of value comes into actual existence for the first time so soon as a particular product of labour, such as cattle, is no longer exceptionally, but habitually, exchanged for various other commodities.

The third and lastly developed form expresses the values of the whole world of commodities in terms of a single commodity set apart for the purpose, namely, the linen, and thus represents to us their values by means of their equality with linen. The value of every commodity is now, by being equated to linen, not only differentiated from its own use-value, but from all other use-values generally, and is, by that very fact, expressed as that which is common to all commodities. By this form, commodities are, for the first time, effectively brought into relation with one another as values, or made to appear as exchange values.

The two earlier forms either express the value of each commodity in terms of a single commodity of a different kind, or in a series of many such commodities. In both cases, it is, so to say, the special business of each single commodity to find an expression for its value, and this it does without the help of the others. These others, with respect to the former, play the passive parts of equivalents. The general form of value C, results from the joint action of the whole world of commodities, and from that alone. A commodity can acquire a general expression of its value only by all other commodities, simultaneously with it, expressing their values in the same equivalent; and every new commodity must follow suit. It thus becomes evident that, since the existence of commodities as values is purely social, this social existence can be expressed by the totality of their social relations alone, and consequently that the form of their value must be a socially recognised form.

All commodities being equated to linen now appear not only as qualitatively equal as values generally, but also as values whose magnitudes are capable of comparison. 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 lbs. of tea=20 yards of linen, and 40 lbs. of coffee=20 yards of linen. Therefore, 10 lbs. of tea=40 lbs. of coffee. In other words, there is contained in 1 lb, of coffee only one-fourth as much substance of value—labour—as is contained in 1 lb. of tea.

The general form of relative value, embracing the whole world of commodities, converts the single commodity that is excluded from the rest, and made to play the part of equivalent—here the linen—into the universal equivalent. The bodily form of the linen is now the form assumed in common by the value of all commodities; it therefore becomes directly exchangeable with all and every of them. The substance linen becomes the visible incarnation, the social chrysalis state of every kind of human labour. Weaving, which is the labour of certain private individuals producing a particular article, linen, acquires in consequence a social character, the character of equality with all other kinds of labour. The innumerable equations of which the general form of value is composed, equate in turn the labour embodied in the linen to that embodied in every other commodity, and they thus convert weaving into the general form of manifestation of undifferentiated human labour. In this manner the labour realised in the values of commodities is presented not only under its negative aspect, under which abstraction is made from every concrete form and useful property of actual work, but its own positive nature is made to reveal itself expressly. The general value-form is the reduction of all kinds of actual labour to their common character of being human labour generally, of being the expenditure of human labour power.

The general value form, which represents all products of labour as mere congelations of undifferentiated human labour, shows by its very structure that it is the social resumé of the world of commodities. That form consequently makes it indisputably evident that in the world of commodities the character possessed by all labour of being human labour constitutes its specific social character.

2. The interdependent development of the Relative form of value, and of the Equivalent form.

The degree of development of the relation form of value corresponds to that of the equivalent form. But we must bear in mind that the development of the latter is only the expression and result of the development of the former.

The primary or isolated relative form of value of one commodity converts some other commodity into an isolated equivalent. The expanded form of relative value, which is the expression of the value of one commodity in terms of all other commodities, endows those other commodities with the character of particular equivalents differing in kind. And lastly, a particular kind of commodity acquires the character of universal equivalent, because all other commodities make it the material in which they uniformly express their value.

The antagonism between the relative form of value and the equivalent form, the poles of the value form, is developed concurrently with that form itself.

The first form, 20 yds. of linen=one coat, already contains this antagonism, without as yet fixing it. According as we read this equation forwards or backwards, the parts played by the linen and the coat are different. In the one case the relative value of the linen is expressed in the coat, in the other case the relative value of the coat is expressed in the linen. In this first form of value, therefore, it is difficult to grasp the polar contrast.

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. Here we cannot reverse the equation, as we can the equation 20 yds. of linen=1 coat, without altering its general character, and converting it from the expanded form of value into the general form of value.

Finally, the form C gives to the world of commodities a general social relative form of value, because, and in so far as, thereby all commodities, with the exception of one, are excluded from the equivalent form. 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.34

The commodity that figures as universal equivalent, is, on the other hand, excluded from the relative value form. If the linen, or any other commodity serving as universal equivalent, were, at the same time, to share in the relative form of value, it would have to serve as its own equivalent. We should then have 20 yds. of linen=20 yds. of linen; this tautology expresses neither value, nor magnitude of value. In order to express the relative value of the universal equivalent, we must rather reverse the form C. This equivalent has no relative form of value in common with other commodities, but its value is relatively expressed by a never ending series of other commodities. Thus, the expanded form of relative value, or form B, now shows itself as the specific form of relative value for the equivalent commodity.

3. Transition from the General form of value to the Money form.

The universal equivalent form is a form of value in general. It can, therefore, be assumed by any commodity. On the other hand, if a commodity be found to have assumed the universal equivalent form (form C), this is only because and in so far as it has been excluded from the rest of all other commodities as their equivalent, and that by their own act. And from the moment that this exclusion becomes finally restricted to one particular commodity, from that moment only, the general form of relative value of the world of commodities obtains real consistence and general social validity.

The particular commodity, with whose bodily form the equivalent form is thus socially identified, now becomes the money commodity, or serves as money. It becomes the special social function of that commodity, and consequently its social monopoly, to play within the world of commodities the part of the universal equivalent. Amongst the commodities which, in form B, figure as particular equivalents of the linen, and in form C, express in common their relative values in linen, this foremost place has been attained by one in particular—namely, gold. If, then, in form C we replace the linen by gold, we get,

[34.][34] It is by no means self-evident that this character of direct and universal exchangeability is, so to speak, a polar one, and as intimately connected with its opposite pole, the absence of direct exchangeability, as the positive pole of the magnet is with its negative counterpart. It may therefore be imagined that all commodities can simultaneously have this character impressed upon them, just as it can be imagined that all Catholics can be popes together. It is, of course, highly desirable in the eyes of the petit bourgeois, for whom the production of commodities is the ne plus ultra of human freedom and individual independence, that the inconveniences resulting from this character of commodities not being directly exchangeable, should be removed. Proudhon's socialism is a working out of this Philistine Utopia, a form of socialism which, as I have elsewhere shown, does not possess even the merit of originality. Long before his time, the task was attempted with much better success by Gray, Bray, and others. But, for all that, wisdom of this kind flourishes even now in certain circles under the name of "science." Never has any school played more tricks with the word science, than that of Proudhon, for "wo Begriffe fehlen Da stellt zur rechten Zeit ein Wort sich ein."