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To us living in a commodity society it seems as if usefulness implies
exchangeability. However primitive societies exist which produce lots
of useful things, without any of them ever being exchanged. Also the
flow of goods inside a factory is not mediated by exchange. It is a
property of society at large, a level [2] property, that allows
useful things to be exchanged on a routine basis. Which property of
society is it? That all labors count as equal. I exchange my product
against yours because I consider the labor I put into my product
equivalent to the labor you put into yours. But labors are equal only
as abstract labors. This is why Marx says that the abstrat labor
inside the goods is what makes them exchangeable. |
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