Even if we know, as a matter of experience, that some in American society are “more equal than others”, nonetheless, we cling to the notion that not only equality, but also freedom, are our birthright. And this is a good feeling. But what are we saying when we say that we are all free and equal? Especially, what on earth can these words mean when we look out, from a high vantage point, over these United States, first, and then around the world?

To start with the meanings of words is to start with what they mean in themselves, before they must take their often contested place in the tohu-bohu, the sturm und drang, the hustle and bustle of everyday life and everyday speech. So let’s try some definitions.

What is freedom? I am free insofar as I am free to do as I will with what is mine.

What is equality? All are equal insofar as they are equal before the law. But this equality has a necessary economic dimension: all are equal insofar as they exchange equivalent for equivalent.

These are standard definitions in bourgeois political and moral philosophy. They are monumental developments in human history. They are not necessarily the last word. … So,

The rest of this is something I use in my course on Marx’s Capital, and since it comes up well into the course, it takes everything before for granted. So here’s a little to help it make some kind of sense:

Everything begins with the commodity, that is, a useful object, produced, for exchange. This is the simplest possible, most abstract definition, only the beginning, that will develop, and become more and more concrete, over the entire course of the argument. But it presents us with the three necessary components of the commodity: as useful (capable of satisfying wants and needs) it has use-value; as for exchange it has exchange-value; as produced, it has value.

For Marx, understanding of the capitalist mode of production begins with the commodity, and a single commodity contains within it the entirety of the capitalist mode of production, just as a single cell contains in it the entirety of the organism of which it is a part. The tripartite division of the commodity – use-value, exchange-value, value – underlies, or is embodied, in every element of the mode of production as a whole.

Right now, a word about use-value, value and money is enough, but if you want to know more – well, if you really want to know more, settle down with a stiff drink in a comfortable chair and start reading Capital, vol. I, but it’s going to take more than an evening – see, for example, Capital in two pages!

But note: the difference between value and exchange-value is one of the most distinctive features of Marx’s economic theory, remember that there’s an awful lot more going on in the theory than we are going to get to here. And here we go:

Use-value refers to the qualities through which a commodity satisfies a specific want or need.

Value is the universal form of wealth in the capitalist mode of production. Commodities have both use-value and value.

Money is the free-standing, independent, form of value.

Some terms for what follows:

C: commodity; Clp: labour-power; Cms: workers’ means of subsistence; Cʹ > C

M: money; Mw: wage; Mʹ > M

Mʹ = M + ∆M; ∆M: surplus-value

… : production process

In exchange, commodities (C), and Money (M) can be put together in two different ways:

            Simple Circulation: selling in order to buy

C1 – M – C2

Individual X brings C1 to market, and sells it to Individual Y, for the amount of money, M, equal in value to C1. X then buys C2 from individual Z, for the amount of money, M, equal in value to C2. (C1 and C2 are amounts of the commodities, and M is an amount of money.) As values, C1 = M = C2, but C1 and C2 have different use-values, and this is what motivates the exchange: the purpose of Simple Circulation is satisfaction of wants and needs through Use-Values.

            Capital: buying in order to sell

M – C -- Mʹ, Mʹ > M

Individual A buys commodities (C) with the amount of money M, and then sells them for another amount of money.

So, onward! And keep the aspidistra flying!

The Commodity, Freedom, Equality, Class

Capitalists and workers are both free and unfree, equal and unequal. (Capitalists are unfree in that to be capitalists they must subject themselves to the objective laws of capital accumulation.) 

The capitalist mode of production embodies a contradiction: all, including capitalists and workers, are juridically free and equal persons; at the same time, capitalists and workers are divided into a class hierarchy of wealth that perpetuates unfreedom and inequality.

Both poles of the contradiction are inherent in the commodity form: as juridical persons capitalist and labourer are commodity owners, exchanging with one another freely and equally. But commodity production only becomes universal when labour-power itself becomes a commodity. This can only occur if both a class of buyers of labour-power (capitalists) and a class of sellers of labour-power (wage-labourers) exist. Members of the class of wage-labourers own nothing but their own labour-power, and so must sell it as a commodity in order to subsist, since all means of subsistence are commodities. Members of the class of capitalists must own money sufficient to buy labour-power and means of production.

“However, if we think of the whole of capital as standing on one side, i.e. the totality of the purchasers of labour-power, and if we think of the totality of the vendors of labour-power, the totality of workers on the other, then we find that the worker is compelled to sell not a commodity but his own labour-power as a commodity. This is because he finds on the other side, opposed to him and confronting him as alien property, all the means of production, all the material conditions of work together with all the means of subsistence, money and means of production. In other words, all material wealth confronts the worker as the property of the commodity possessors. What is proposed here is that he works as a non-proprietor and that the conditions of his labour confront him as alien property.” (Marx, Capital, vol. I, p. 1003)

“The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working day as long as possible, and, where possible, to make two working days out of one. On the other hand, the peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its consumption by the purchaser, and the worker maintains his right as a seller when he wishes to reduce the working day to a particular normal length. There is here an antimony, of right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchange. Between equal rights, force decides. Hence, in the history of capitalist production, the establishment of a norm for the working day presents itself as a struggle over the limits of that day, a struggle between collective capital, i.e. the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e. the working class.” (Marx, Capital, vol. I, p. 344)