Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/72

Rh strikingly. He cans the material of nature contained in a commodity, such as the silver in a silver plate, its "intrinsic worth," while the labor-time contained in it he calls "useful value." The former, he says "is . . . something real in itself," while "the value of the second must be estimated according to the labour it has cost to produce it. . . . The labour employed in the modification [of the substance] represents a portion of a man's time."

What distinguishes Steuart from his predecessors and followers is his keen differentiation between specifically social labor which is represented in exchange value, and concrete labor which produces use-values. Labor, he says, which through its alienation creates a universal equivalent, I call industry. Labor as industry he distinguishes not only from concrete labor, but from all other social forms of labor. It is to him the capitalistic form of labor in contrast to its antique and mediaeval forms. He is especially interested in the difference between capitalistic and feudal labor, of which he had observed the latter in its decaying forms both in Scotland and on his extensive travels over the continent. Steuart knew, of course, very well that products took on the form of commodities and commodities, the form of money in pre-capitalistic epochs as well; but he proves conclusively that it is only in the capitalistic period of production that the commodity becomes the elementary and