| This question <52|56> overall <52|54> Cleo: <50|92>. |
| Question 113: In a capitalist economy very few commodities are directly exchanged against each other: almost all transactions involve money and a commodity. Why does Marx start his investigation with the exchange relation between two commodities, instead with the much more common relation between money and a commodity? |
| [53] Cleo: I would like to add to Bach's entry [52] entitled “money.” |
| Bach is exactly right, when he says the money is not the object with the value as it might seem, but rather it is the labor that has been performed which allowed one to get money. It is the amount of labor devoted to production that allows for the price of a good or service to be determined. The value that a commodity contains is linked to the amount of labor that was invested in it, not the dollar sign that a commodity holds, that is simply a place holder. |
| As Marx sees it, laborers sell their ability to work as commodities, and they exchange their labor power for money. The goods produced by the laborers are then exchanged in the market for money. At this stage, money is simply an exchangeable commodity. |
| According to Marx, it is the average amount of work that a laborer puts into the creation of a commodity, not the time an individual invests, that creates the value for a single commodity. It is the labor power that is necessary to create the commodity, is later used to determine the value of the commodity. Money therefore, seems to be a place holder for the value of an exchangeable commodity. |
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