Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/55

Rh quantity of every other commodity. Thus, within the sphere of exchange all commodities are or appear to each other as exchange values in the form of linen. The proposition that commodities, as exchange values, are to each other as different quantities of materialized universal labor-time, may now be worded to the effect that commodities, as exchange values, represent nothing but different quantities of the same article, linen. Universal labor-time thus assumes the aspect of a distinct thing, as a commodity existing along with and outside of all other commodities. At the same time the equation 2 lbs. of coffee = 1 yard of linen, in which one commodity appears as the exchange value of another, is yet to be realized. Only by being alienated as use value—which depends upon whether it proves to be in the process of exchange the object of a certain want—does the commodity actually transform its existence as coffee into the existence as linen and thus takes on the form of a universal equivalent and becomes, indeed, an exchange value for all other commodities. Conversely, since all commodities are turned into linen by being alienated as use-values, linen becomes the converted form of all other commodities, and only as a result of this transformation of all other commodities into it, it becomes the direct embodiment of universal labor-time, i. e., the product of universal exchange and of the elimination of individual labor. If commodities thus assume a twofold character in order to appear as exchange values to each other, the commodity which has been singled out as the universal equivalent becomes, on the other hand, a use-value in two ways. Besides