Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/81

Rh identical, they are the incarnation of the same labor, or the same incarnation of labor, viz., gold. As uniform embodiments of the same labor they display only one difference, a quantitative one, by appearing as different quantities of value, because unequal quantities of labor-time are contained in their use-values. The mutual relation of these separate commodities is that of embodiments of universal labor-time, since they are related to universal labor-time as to an excluded commodity, viz., gold. The same relation the development of which causes commodities to appear to each other as exchange values, causes the labor time contained in gold to appear as universal labor-time, a given quantity of which is expressed in different quantities of iron, wheat, coffee, etc,—in short, in the use-values of all commodities, or is directly unfolded in the endless series of commodity-equivalents. While all commodities express their exchange values in gold, gold expresses its exchange value directly in all commodities. While commodities assume the form of exchange value in relation to each other, they lend to gold the form of the universal equivalent, or of money. Gold becomes the measure of value, because all commodities measure their exchange values in gold, in proportion as a certain quantity of gold and a certain quantity of the commodity contain the same amount of labor-time; and it is only by virtue of this function of being a measure of value, in which capacity its own value is measured directly in the entire series of commodity equivalents, that gold becomes a universal equivalent or money. On the other hand, the exchange