Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/74

Rh dealt with each other not as capitalists, wage-workers, landlords, tenants, usurers, etc., but merely as plain producers of commodities which they exchanged. He constantly confuses the determination of the value of commodities by the labor-time contained in them with the determination of their value by the value of labor. He becomes confused in working out the details and fails to see the objective equalization of different kinds of labor which the social process forcibly carries out, mistaking it for the subjective equality of the labors of individuals. The transition from concrete labor to labor creating exchange value, i. e. to labor in its fundamental capitalistic form he tries to derive from the division of labor. Yet, while it is true that private exchange implies the division of labor, it is false to maintain that division of labor implies private exchange. Among the Peruvians, e. g., labor was divided to an extraordinary extent, although there was no private exchange, no exchange of products, as commodities.