Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/115

Rh of commodity for commodity, real interchange of matter.

If we look at it from the extreme end of the first commodity, C—M—C represents its transformation into gold and its retransformation from gold into a commodity; a movement in which the commodity exists first as a particular use-value, then divests itself of that character, acquires the character of exchange value or universal equivalent, in which capacity it has nothing in common with its natural form, then throws off the last form as well to remain finally an actual use-value for the satisfaction of particular wants. In this last form it falls out of the sphere of circulation into that of consumption. The entire process of circulation C—M—C thus includes the combined series of metamorphoses, which every single commodity undergoes in order to become a direct use-value to its possessor. The first metamorphosis is accomplished in the first phase of the circulation process, C—M; the second in the last phase, M—C; and the entire process constitutes the curriculum vitae of the commodity. But the process C—M—C represents the combined metamorphosis of a single commodity and constitutes at the same time the sum of certain one-sided metamorphoses of other commodities, since every metamorphosis of the first commodity constitutes its transformation into another commodity and therefore the transformation of the other commodity into it; hence it constitutes a twofold transformation which takes place at the same stage of circulation. We must then consider separately