An Updated Marxian Theory of the Commodity

How does material production become sociallyrecognised in Capitalism? This is a fundamentalquestion for Economics since material productiontakes place privately and independently in aworldwide system. The theory of the commodityoutlined in this book shows that the process ofsocial recognition of material production and theprocess giving rise to money are one and the same. Infact they are only the material manifestation of therealisation of work carried out privately andindependently as part of the social labour. The bookcompletes the characterisation of commodities as ahistorical form of the social product and recoversMarx's fundamental concept of the mercantile form ofvalue. As a result it becomes evident that themercantile form of value is the indirect way incommodity production to allocate the productivepowers of society Smith's invisible hand. The bookalso breaks the false immediate links between themeans of production and capital and between moneyand capital. The fallacy that the labour theory ofvalue disregards the inputs to production other thanlabour is thus laid bare as is the misconceptionthat directly identifies supply with production.