Commodity (Marxism)
Encyclopedia
In classical political economy
and especially Karl Marx
's critique of political economy
, a commodity is any good or service produced by human labour and offered as a product for general sale on the market. Some other priced goods are also treated as commodities, e.g. human labor-power, works of art and natural resources, even although they may not be produced specifically for the market, or be non-reproducible goods.
Marx's analysis of the commodity (in German: Kaufware, i.e. merchandise, ware for sale) is intended to help solve the problem of what establishes the economic value of goods, using the labor theory of value
. This problem was extensively debated by Adam Smith
, David Ricardo
and Karl Rodbertus-Jagetzow among others. Value and price
are not equivalent terms in economics, and theorising the specific relationship of value to market price has been a challenge for both liberal and Marxist economists.
According to the labor theory of value
, product-values in an open market are regulated by the average socially necessary labour time
required to produce them, and price relativities of products are ultimately governed by the law of value
.
to their own requirements, and they aim to obtain different goods with an equal value in return.
Marx refers to this as "simple exchange" which implies what Frederick Engels calls "simple commodity production
". At first, goods may not even be intentionally produced for the explicit purpose of exchanging them, but as a regular market for goods develops and a cash economy grows, this becomes more and more the case, and production increasingly becomes integrated in commodity trade.
Even so, in simple commodity production, not all inputs and outputs of the production process are necessarily commodities or priced goods, and it is compatible with a variety of different relations of production
ranging from self-employment and family labour to serfdom and slavery. Typically, however, it is the producer himself who trades his surpluses.
However, as the division of labour
becomes more complex, a class of merchants emerges which specialises in trading commodities, buying here and selling there, without producing products themselves, and parallel to this, property owners emerge who extend credit and charge rents. This process goes together with the increased use of money
, and the aim of merchants, bankers and rentiers becomes to gain income from the trade, by acting as intermediaries between producers and consumers.
The transformation of a labor-product into a commodity (its "marketing") is in reality not a simple process, but has many technical and social preconditions. These often include:
Thus, the "commodification
" of a good or service often involves a considerable practical accomplishment in trade. It is a process that may be influenced not just by economic or technical factors, but also political and cultural factors, insofar as it involves property rights, claims to access to resources, and guarantees about quality or safety of use.
"To trade or not to trade", that may be the question. The modern debate in this regard focuses often on intellectual property rights because ideas are increasingly becoming objects of trade, and the technology now exists to transform ideas into commodities much more easily.
In absolute terms, exchange values can also be measured as quantities of average labour-hours. By contrast, prices are normally measured in money-units. For practical purposes, prices are however usually preferable to labour-hours, as units of account, although in capitalist work processes the two are related to each other (see labor power
).
Modern Capitalism
according to Marx involves a mode of production
based on generalised commodity production (Marx's German term is veralgemeinte Warenproduktion), a universal market (see also capitalist mode of production
). This means, that both the inputs and the outputs of most production in society have become priced, tradeable goods (including the means of production
and human labour power), and that what and how much is produced is largely determined by the response of producers to the "state of the market". Production is now explicitly engaged in for the purpose of market sales only, which implies both that its whole organisation is reshaped for this aim, and that people can meet their own needs by purchases in the market (rather than producing goods directly for their own consumption).
The hyphens ("-") here refer to a transaction applying to an exchange involving goods or money; the dots in the last-mentioned circuit ("...") indicate that a value-forming process ("P") occurs in between purchase of commodities and the sales of different commodities. Thus, while at first merchants are intermediaries between producers and consumers, later capitalist production becomes an intermediary between buyers and sellers of commodities. In that case, the valuation of labour is determined by the value of its products.
The reifying
effects of universalised trade in commodities, involving a process Marx calls "commodity fetishism
," mean that social relations become expressed as relations between things; for example, price relations. Markets mediate a complex network of interdependencies and supply chain
s emerging among people who may not even know who produced the goods they buy, or where they were produced.
Since no one agency can control or regulate the myriad of transactions that occur (apart from blocking some trade here, and permitting it there), the whole of production falls under the sway of the law of value
, and economics becomes a science aiming to understand market behaviour, i.e. the aggregate effects of a multitude of people interacting in markets. How quantities of use-values are allocated in a market economy depends mainly on their exchange value
, and this allocation is mediated by the "cash nexus".
In Marx's analysis of the capitalist mode of production
, commodity sales increase the amount of exchange-value in the possession of the owners of capital
, i.e., they yield profit
and thus augment their capital (capital accumulation
).
Capitalist
s as businesspeople are interested in use-values primarily from the point of view of their money-making potential, i.e. their exchange-value; any useful object may in principle become an object of exchange and profit-making, although that may in practice take quite some doing. In simple terms, the primary concern of businesspeople here is commercial: the money they can obtain from owning or selling the commodity.
But if an increase in capital-value is to be realised, it is essential that sales of commodities occur. Consequently, the accumulation of capital must go together with the expansion of market sales of commodities. In that sense, businesspeople cannot be indifferent to the use-values in which they trade.
), Marx claims that the value of any such commodity is reducible to four components equal to:
These components reflect respectively labour costs, the cost of materials and operating expenses including depreciation, and generic profit.
In capitalism, Marx argues, commodity values are commercially expressed as the prices of production
of commodities (cost-price + average profit). Prices of production are established jointly by average input costs and by the ruling profit margins applying to outputs sold. They reflect the fact that production has become totally integrated into the circuits of commodity trade, in which capital accumulation
becomes the dominant motive. But what prices of production simultaneously hide is the social nature of the valorisation
process, i.e. how an increase in capital-value occurs through production.
Likewise, in considering the gross output of capitalist production in an economy as a whole, Marx divides its value into these four components. He argues that the total new value added in production, which he calls the value product
, consists of the equivalent of variable capital, plus surplus value. Thus, the workers produce by their labor both a new value equal to their own wages, plus an additional new value which is claimed by capitalists by virtue of their ownership and supply of productive capital.
By producing new capital in the form of new commodities, Marx argues the working class continuously reproduces
the capitalist relations of production
; by their work, workers create a new value distributed as both labour-income and property-income. If, as free workers, they choose to stop working, the system begins to break down; hence, capitalist civilisation strongly emphasizes the work ethic
, regardless of religious belief. People must work, because work is the source of new value, profits and capital.
Political economy
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
and especially Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
's critique of political economy
Political economy
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
, a commodity is any good or service produced by human labour and offered as a product for general sale on the market. Some other priced goods are also treated as commodities, e.g. human labor-power, works of art and natural resources, even although they may not be produced specifically for the market, or be non-reproducible goods.
Marx's analysis of the commodity (in German: Kaufware, i.e. merchandise, ware for sale) is intended to help solve the problem of what establishes the economic value of goods, using the labor theory of value
Labor theory of value
The labor theories of value are heterodox economic theories of value which argue that the value of a commodity is related to the labor needed to produce or obtain that commodity. The concept is most often associated with Marxian economics...
. This problem was extensively debated by Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
, David Ricardo
David Ricardo
David Ricardo was an English political economist, often credited with systematising economics, and was one of the most influential of the classical economists, along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. He was also a member of Parliament, businessman, financier and speculator,...
and Karl Rodbertus-Jagetzow among others. Value and price
Price
-Definition:In ordinary usage, price is the quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services.In modern economies, prices are generally expressed in units of some form of currency...
are not equivalent terms in economics, and theorising the specific relationship of value to market price has been a challenge for both liberal and Marxist economists.
Characteristics of commodity
In Marx's theory, a commodity is something that is bought and sold.- It has valueLabor theory of valueThe labor theories of value are heterodox economic theories of value which argue that the value of a commodity is related to the labor needed to produce or obtain that commodity. The concept is most often associated with Marxian economics...
, which represents a quantity of human labor. Because it has value, implies that people try to economise its use. A commodity also has a use valueUse valueUse value or value in use is the utility of consuming a good; the want-satisfying power of a good or service in classical political economy. In Marx's critique of political economy, any labor-product has a value and a use-value, and if it is traded as a commodity in markets, it additionally has an...
, an exchange valueExchange valueIn political economy and especially Marxian economics, exchange value refers to one of four major attributes of a commodity, i.e., an item or service produced for, and sold on the market...
and a pricePrice-Definition:In ordinary usage, price is the quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services.In modern economies, prices are generally expressed in units of some form of currency...
.
- It has a use value because, by its intrinsic characteristics, it can satisfy some human need or want, physical or ideal. By nature this is a social use value, i.e. the object is useful not just to the producer but has a use for others generally.
- It has an exchange value, meaning that a commodity can be traded for other commodities, and thus give its owner the benefit of others' labor (the labor done to produce the purchased commodity).
- Price is then the monetary expression of exchange-value (but exchange value could also be expressed as a direct trading ratio between two commodities without using money, and goods could be priced using different valuations or criteria).
According to the labor theory of value
Labor theory of value
The labor theories of value are heterodox economic theories of value which argue that the value of a commodity is related to the labor needed to produce or obtain that commodity. The concept is most often associated with Marxian economics...
, product-values in an open market are regulated by the average socially necessary labour time
Socially necessary labour time
Socially necessary labour time in Marx's critique of political economy is what regulates the exchange value of commodities in trade and consequently guides producers in their attempt to economise on labour....
required to produce them, and price relativities of products are ultimately governed by the law of value
Law of value
-General:The law of value is a central concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy, first expounded in his polemic The Poverty of Philosophy against Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, with reference to David Ricardo's economics...
.
Illustration
To understand the concept of a commodity, consider a chair. It is a commodity if the chair is a tradable product of human work possessing a social use-value. By contrast, a fallen log of deadwood sat upon in the forest is not a commodity, as it was not produced by human work for the purpose of trade. A chair created by a hobbyist as a gift to someone is not a commodity. Nor is a chair a commodity (as a chair) if its only use would be as firewood (unless one purchases a chair specifically to chop it up for firewood). A chair that nothing could sit on, has no use-value, and cannot be a commodity. An ornamental chair might yet however, have value.Historical origins of commodity trade
Commodity-trade, Marx argues, historically begins at the boundaries of separate economic communities based otherwise on a non-commercial form of production. Thus, producers trade in those goods of which those producers, have episodic or permanent surplusesSurplus product
Surplus product is a concept explicitly theorised by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. Marx first began to work out his idea of surplus product in his 1844 notes on James Mill's Elements of political economy...
to their own requirements, and they aim to obtain different goods with an equal value in return.
Marx refers to this as "simple exchange" which implies what Frederick Engels calls "simple commodity production
Simple commodity production
Simple commodity production is a term coined by Frederick Engels to describe productive activities under the conditions of what Marx had called the "simple exchange" of commodities, where independent producers trade their own products...
". At first, goods may not even be intentionally produced for the explicit purpose of exchanging them, but as a regular market for goods develops and a cash economy grows, this becomes more and more the case, and production increasingly becomes integrated in commodity trade.
Even so, in simple commodity production, not all inputs and outputs of the production process are necessarily commodities or priced goods, and it is compatible with a variety of different relations of production
Relations of production
Relations of production is a concept frequently used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their theory of historical materialism, and in Das Kapital...
ranging from self-employment and family labour to serfdom and slavery. Typically, however, it is the producer himself who trades his surpluses.
However, as the division of labour
Division of labour
Division of labour is the specialisation of cooperative labour in specific, circumscribed tasks and likeroles. Historically an increasingly complex division of labour is closely associated with the growth of total output and trade, the rise of capitalism, and of the complexity of industrialisation...
becomes more complex, a class of merchants emerges which specialises in trading commodities, buying here and selling there, without producing products themselves, and parallel to this, property owners emerge who extend credit and charge rents. This process goes together with the increased use of money
Money
Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context. The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally in the past,...
, and the aim of merchants, bankers and rentiers becomes to gain income from the trade, by acting as intermediaries between producers and consumers.
The transformation of a labor-product into a commodity (its "marketing") is in reality not a simple process, but has many technical and social preconditions. These often include:
- the existence of a reliable supply of a product, or at least a surplus or surplus productSurplus productSurplus product is a concept explicitly theorised by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. Marx first began to work out his idea of surplus product in his 1844 notes on James Mill's Elements of political economy...
. - the existence of a social need for it (a market demand) that must be met through trade, or at any event cannot be met otherwise.
- the legally sanctioned assertion of private ownership rights to the commodity.
- the enforcement of these rights, so that ownership is secure.
- the transferability of these private rights from one owner to another.
- the right to buy and sell the commodity, and/or obtain (privately) and keep income from such trade
- the (physical) transferability of the commodity itself, i.e. the ability to store, package, preserve and transport it from one owner to another.
- the imposition of exclusivity of access to the commodity.
- the possibility of the owner to use or consume the commodity privately.
- guarantees about the quality and safety of the commodity, and possibly a guarantee of replacement or service, should it fail to function as intended.
Thus, the "commodification
Commodification
Commodification is the transformation of goods, ideas, or other entities that may not normally be regarded as goods into a commodity....
" of a good or service often involves a considerable practical accomplishment in trade. It is a process that may be influenced not just by economic or technical factors, but also political and cultural factors, insofar as it involves property rights, claims to access to resources, and guarantees about quality or safety of use.
"To trade or not to trade", that may be the question. The modern debate in this regard focuses often on intellectual property rights because ideas are increasingly becoming objects of trade, and the technology now exists to transform ideas into commodities much more easily.
In absolute terms, exchange values can also be measured as quantities of average labour-hours. By contrast, prices are normally measured in money-units. For practical purposes, prices are however usually preferable to labour-hours, as units of account, although in capitalist work processes the two are related to each other (see labor power
Labor power
Labour power is a crucial concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of capitalist political economy. He regarded labour power as the most important of the productive forces of human beings. Labour power can be simply defined as work-capacity, the ability to do work...
).
Modern Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
according to Marx involves a mode of production
Mode of production
In the writings of Karl Marx and the Marxist theory of historical materialism, a mode of production is a specific combination of:...
based on generalised commodity production (Marx's German term is veralgemeinte Warenproduktion), a universal market (see also capitalist mode of production
Capitalist mode of production
In Marx's critique of political economy, the capitalist mode of production is the production system of capitalist societies, which began in Europe in the 16th century, grew rapidly in Western Europe from the end of the 18th century, and later extended to most of the world...
). This means, that both the inputs and the outputs of most production in society have become priced, tradeable goods (including the means of production
Means of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
and human labour power), and that what and how much is produced is largely determined by the response of producers to the "state of the market". Production is now explicitly engaged in for the purpose of market sales only, which implies both that its whole organisation is reshaped for this aim, and that people can meet their own needs by purchases in the market (rather than producing goods directly for their own consumption).
Forms of commodity trade
The 7 basic forms of commodity trade can be summarised as follows:- M-C (an act of purchase: a sum of money purchases a commodity)
- C-M (an act of sale: a commodity is sold for money)
- M-M' (a sum of money is lent out at interest to obtain more money, or, one currency or financial claim is traded for another)
- C-C' (countertrade, in which a commodity trades directly for a different commodity, with money possibly being used as an accounting referent, for example, food for oil, or weapons for diamonds) (a commodity is sold for money, which buys another, different commodity with an equal or higher value) (money is used to buy a commodity which is resold to obtain a larger sum of money)
- M-C...P...-C'-M' (money buys means of productionMeans of productionMeans of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
and labour power used in production to create a new commodity, which is sold for more money than the original outlay).
The hyphens ("-") here refer to a transaction applying to an exchange involving goods or money; the dots in the last-mentioned circuit ("...") indicate that a value-forming process ("P") occurs in between purchase of commodities and the sales of different commodities. Thus, while at first merchants are intermediaries between producers and consumers, later capitalist production becomes an intermediary between buyers and sellers of commodities. In that case, the valuation of labour is determined by the value of its products.
The reifying
Reification (Marxism)
Reification or Versachlichung, literally "objectification" or regarding something as a separate business matter) is the consideration of an abstraction, relation or object as if they had human or living existence and abilities, when in reality they do not...
effects of universalised trade in commodities, involving a process Marx calls "commodity fetishism
Commodity fetishism
In Marx's critique of political economy, commodity fetishism denotes the mystification of human relations said to arise out of the growth of market trade, when social relationships between people are expressed as, mediated by and transformed into, objectified relationships between things .The...
," mean that social relations become expressed as relations between things; for example, price relations. Markets mediate a complex network of interdependencies and supply chain
Supply chain
A supply chain is a system of organizations, people, technology, activities, information and resources involved in moving a product or service from supplier to customer. Supply chain activities transform natural resources, raw materials and components into a finished product that is delivered to...
s emerging among people who may not even know who produced the goods they buy, or where they were produced.
Since no one agency can control or regulate the myriad of transactions that occur (apart from blocking some trade here, and permitting it there), the whole of production falls under the sway of the law of value
Law of value
-General:The law of value is a central concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy, first expounded in his polemic The Poverty of Philosophy against Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, with reference to David Ricardo's economics...
, and economics becomes a science aiming to understand market behaviour, i.e. the aggregate effects of a multitude of people interacting in markets. How quantities of use-values are allocated in a market economy depends mainly on their exchange value
Exchange value
In political economy and especially Marxian economics, exchange value refers to one of four major attributes of a commodity, i.e., an item or service produced for, and sold on the market...
, and this allocation is mediated by the "cash nexus".
In Marx's analysis of the capitalist mode of production
Capitalist mode of production
In Marx's critique of political economy, the capitalist mode of production is the production system of capitalist societies, which began in Europe in the 16th century, grew rapidly in Western Europe from the end of the 18th century, and later extended to most of the world...
, commodity sales increase the amount of exchange-value in the possession of the owners of capital
Capital (economics)
In economics, capital, capital goods, or real capital refers to already-produced durable goods used in production of goods or services. The capital goods are not significantly consumed, though they may depreciate in the production process...
, i.e., they yield profit
Profit (economics)
In economics, the term profit has two related but distinct meanings. Normal profit represents the total opportunity costs of a venture to an entrepreneur or investor, whilst economic profit In economics, the term profit has two related but distinct meanings. Normal profit represents the total...
and thus augment their capital (capital accumulation
Capital accumulation
The accumulation of capital refers to the gathering or amassing of objects of value; the increase in wealth through concentration; or the creation of wealth. Capital is money or a financial asset invested for the purpose of making more money...
).
Capitalist
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
s as businesspeople are interested in use-values primarily from the point of view of their money-making potential, i.e. their exchange-value; any useful object may in principle become an object of exchange and profit-making, although that may in practice take quite some doing. In simple terms, the primary concern of businesspeople here is commercial: the money they can obtain from owning or selling the commodity.
But if an increase in capital-value is to be realised, it is essential that sales of commodities occur. Consequently, the accumulation of capital must go together with the expansion of market sales of commodities. In that sense, businesspeople cannot be indifferent to the use-values in which they trade.
Cost structure of commodities
In considering the unit cost of a capitalistically produced commodity (in contrast to simple commodity productionSimple commodity production
Simple commodity production is a term coined by Frederick Engels to describe productive activities under the conditions of what Marx had called the "simple exchange" of commodities, where independent producers trade their own products...
), Marx claims that the value of any such commodity is reducible to four components equal to:
- variable capital used up to produce it
- fixed and circulating constant capitalConstant capitalConstant capital , is a concept created by Karl Marx and used in Marxian political economy. It refers to one of the forms of capital invested in production, which contrasts with variable capital...
used up per unit - incidental expenses which cost labour-time (faux frais of productionFaux frais of productionFaux frais of production is a concept used by classical political economists and by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. It refers to "incidental operating expenses" incurred in the productive investment of capital, which do not themselves add new value to output...
) - surplus valueSurplus valueSurplus value is a concept used famously by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. Although Marx did not himself invent the term, he developed the concept...
per unit.
These components reflect respectively labour costs, the cost of materials and operating expenses including depreciation, and generic profit.
In capitalism, Marx argues, commodity values are commercially expressed as the prices of production
Prices of production
Prices of production refers to a concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy. It is introduced in the third volume of Das Kapital, where Marx considers the operation of capitalist production as the unity of a production process and a circulation process involving commodities, money and...
of commodities (cost-price + average profit). Prices of production are established jointly by average input costs and by the ruling profit margins applying to outputs sold. They reflect the fact that production has become totally integrated into the circuits of commodity trade, in which capital accumulation
Capital accumulation
The accumulation of capital refers to the gathering or amassing of objects of value; the increase in wealth through concentration; or the creation of wealth. Capital is money or a financial asset invested for the purpose of making more money...
becomes the dominant motive. But what prices of production simultaneously hide is the social nature of the valorisation
Valorisation
The valorisation or valorization of capital is a theoretical concept created by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. The German original term is "Verwertung" but this is difficult to translate, and often wrongly rendered as "realisation of capital", "creation of surplus-value" or...
process, i.e. how an increase in capital-value occurs through production.
Likewise, in considering the gross output of capitalist production in an economy as a whole, Marx divides its value into these four components. He argues that the total new value added in production, which he calls the value product
Value product
The value product is an economic concept formulated by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy during the 1860s, and used in Marxian social accounting theory for capitalist economies...
, consists of the equivalent of variable capital, plus surplus value. Thus, the workers produce by their labor both a new value equal to their own wages, plus an additional new value which is claimed by capitalists by virtue of their ownership and supply of productive capital.
By producing new capital in the form of new commodities, Marx argues the working class continuously reproduces
Reproduction (economics)
In Marxian economics, economic reproduction refers to recurrent processes by which the initial conditions necessary for economic activity to occur are constantly re-created...
the capitalist relations of production
Relations of production
Relations of production is a concept frequently used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their theory of historical materialism, and in Das Kapital...
; by their work, workers create a new value distributed as both labour-income and property-income. If, as free workers, they choose to stop working, the system begins to break down; hence, capitalist civilisation strongly emphasizes the work ethic
Work ethic
Work ethic is a set of values based on hard work and diligence. It is also a belief in the moral benefit of work and its ability to enhance character. An example would be the Protestant work ethic...
, regardless of religious belief. People must work, because work is the source of new value, profits and capital.
Pseudo-commodities
Marx acknowledged explicitly that not all commodities are products of human labour; all kinds of things can be traded "as if" they are commodities, so long as property rights can be attached to them. These are "fictitious commodities" or "pseudo-commodities" or "fiduciary commodities", i.e. their existence as commodities is only nominal or conventional. They may not even be tangible objects, but exist only ideally. A property right or financial claim, for instance, may be traded as a commodity.See also
- CommodityCommodityIn economics, a commodity is the generic term for any marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs. Economic commodities comprise goods and services....
- Commodity productionCommodity productionCommodity production is the production of wares for sale. It is a type of production in which products are produced not for direct consumption by the producers, as in subsistence production, but are surplus to their own requirements and are produced instead specifically with the intention of sale...
- Simple commodity productionSimple commodity productionSimple commodity production is a term coined by Frederick Engels to describe productive activities under the conditions of what Marx had called the "simple exchange" of commodities, where independent producers trade their own products...
- CommodificationCommodificationCommodification is the transformation of goods, ideas, or other entities that may not normally be regarded as goods into a commodity....
- Labour theory of value
- Law of valueLaw of value-General:The law of value is a central concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy, first expounded in his polemic The Poverty of Philosophy against Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, with reference to David Ricardo's economics...
- Exchange valueExchange valueIn political economy and especially Marxian economics, exchange value refers to one of four major attributes of a commodity, i.e., an item or service produced for, and sold on the market...
- Use valueUse valueUse value or value in use is the utility of consuming a good; the want-satisfying power of a good or service in classical political economy. In Marx's critique of political economy, any labor-product has a value and a use-value, and if it is traded as a commodity in markets, it additionally has an...
- Commodity fetishismCommodity fetishismIn Marx's critique of political economy, commodity fetishism denotes the mystification of human relations said to arise out of the growth of market trade, when social relationships between people are expressed as, mediated by and transformed into, objectified relationships between things .The...
- Value-form (Marxism)