Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/59

Rh the part of money. Even if not direct means of satisfying existing wants, their being the most considerable material constituent part of wealth, insures to them a more general character than to the other use-values.

Direct barter, the original natural form of exchange, represents rather the beginning of the transformation of use-values into commodities, than that of commodities into money. Exchange value has as yet no form of its own, but is still directly bound up with use-value. This is manifested in two ways. Production, in its entire organization, aims at the creation of use-values and not of exchange values, and it is only when their supply exceeds the measure of consumption that use-values cease to be use-values, and become means of exchange, i. e., commodities. At the same time, they become commodities only within the limits of being direct use-values distributed at opposite poles, so that the commodities to be exchanged by their possessors must be use-values to both,—each commodity to its non-possessor. As a matter of fact, the exchange of commodities originates not within the primitive communities, but where they end, on their borders at the few points, where they come in contact with other communities. That is where barter begins, and from here it strikes back into the interior of the community, decomposing it. The various