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BOOK I.
CAPITALIST PRODUCTION.
part i.
commodities and money.
CHAPTER I.
COMMODITIES.
section 1.—the two factors of a commodity: use-value and value (the substance of value and the magnitude of value).
THE wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as "an immense accumulation of commodities,"[1] its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.
A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no differ-
- ↑ Karl Marx "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy," 1859, London, p. 19.
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