every commodity is capable of subdivision, like the labor-time embodied in it. The equivalence of commodities is independent of their physical divisibility as use-values, just as the sum of the exchange values of commodities is indifferent to the change of form which use-values have to undergo when converted into a single new commodity.
So far we have considered commodities from a two-fold point of view, as use-values and exchange values alternately. But a commodity as such is a direct combination of use-value and exchange value; and it is a commodity only in relation to other commodities. The actual relation between commodities constitutes the process of their exchange. It is a social process participated in by individuals independent of each other but the part they take in it is that of owners of commodities only. Their mutual relations are those of their commodities, and thus they really appear as conscious factors of the process of exchange.
A commodity is a use-value, wheat, linen, a diamond, a machine, etc., but as a commodity it is, at the same time, not a use-value. If it were a use-value for its owner, i.e., a direct means for the satisfaction of his own wants, then it would not be a commodity. To him it is rather a non-use-value; it is merely the material depository of exchange-value, or simply a means of exchange; as an active bearer of exchange value, use-value becomes a means of exchange. To the owner it is a use-value only in so far as it constitutes exchange value.[1]
- ↑ It is in that sense that Aristotle (see the passage quoted at the beginning of this chapter) conceives exchange value.
