Marx’s
Capital Volume 1, Part 3
Exchange
In his 1863
plan for the work, Karl Marx proposed to begin Volume 1 of Capital with
“1. Introduction. Commodity.
Money.” In the published version, four years later, an additional short
item – Exchange – was introduced between Commodity and Money.
This is a
helpful, short, readable chapter that manages to reprise the definition of
Commodity and the description of its implications given in the preceding
chapter, while prefiguring the definition of Money that arrives in Chapter 3.
So this
chapter on Exchange is a useful summary. In this regard it is typical of the
work as a whole. Marx takes care in Capital, Volume 1, to allow the reader to
rest at intervals and re-look at the material in a different way, or else to show
off the new parts again in their relation to the whole.
Marx begins
this chapter on Exchange by saying, of commodities:
“In order that these objects may enter into
relation with each other as commodities, their guardians must place themselves
in relation to one another, as persons whose will resides in those objects, and
must behave in such a way that each does not appropriate the commodity of the
other, and part with his own, except by
means of an act done by mutual consent.”
“In the course of our investigation we shall
find, in general, that the characters who appear on the economic stage are but
the personifications of the economic relations that exist between them.
“All commodities are non-use-values for their
owners, and use-values for their non-owners. Consequently, they must all change
hands.
“At the same rate, then, as the conversion of
products into commodities is being accomplished, so also is the conversion of
one special commodity into money.
“What appears to happen is, not that gold becomes money, in consequence
of all other commodities expressing their values in it, but, on the contrary,
that all other commodities universally express their values in gold, because it
is money. The intermediate steps of the process vanish in the result and leave
no trace behind.”
The section
of Chapter 3 on Price is also included in today’s instalment.
- The above serves
to introduce the original reading-text: Capital V1, Chapter 2,
Exchange, with part of Chapter 3, on Price.
- A PDF file of the reading text is attached
- To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.
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