Note 965 — Chapter III · : MARXISM

Marx calls attention to the fact that even Aristotle was puzzled by this common element which exchanged objects seemed to possess, and by the fact that exchange appeared to make them of equal value. We say that 5 beds = 1 house. “What is that equal something, that common substance, which admits of the value of the beds being expressed by a house? Such a thing, in truth, cannot exist, says Aristotle. And why not? Compared with the beds the house does represent something equal to them, in so far as it represents what is really equal, both in the beds and the house. And that is—human labour.” (Kapital, p. 29; Moore and Aveling’s translation—to which the Translator is indebted for the succeeding quotations also.)

“If we make abstraction from its use-value we make abstraction at the same time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a use-value.… Its existence as a material thing is put out of sight. Neither can it any longer be regarded as the product of the labour of the joiner, the mason, the spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive labour … there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour—human labour in the abstract.” (Ibid., p. 5.)