Understanding Marx's Capital (a series of an ultimate guide to Das Kapital) Part 2

### The Dual Nature of the Labor Represented in Commodities

Initially, we saw commodities as having two aspects: use-value and exchange-value. Later, we discovered that the labor expressed in value does not have the same characteristics as the labor that produces use-values. This dual nature of labor in commodities was first critically demonstrated by me (marx). Since this is a key point for understanding political economy, it will be explored in more detail here.

Let’s take two commodities, like a coat and 10 yards of linen. The coat has twice the value of the linen, so if 10 yards of linen equals W, then the coat equals 2W.

The coat is a use-value that satisfies a specific need. To produce it, a certain type of productive activity is needed, defined by its purpose, method, materials, tools, and result. This useful labor, as reflected in the use-value of its product, is referred to simply as useful labor. It is always considered in terms of its utility.

Just as the coat and linen are qualitatively different use-values, the labor that produces them is also qualitatively different—tailoring and weaving. If these commodities were not qualitatively different use-values, produced by different types of useful labor, they could not be exchanged as commodities. A coat cannot be exchanged for another coat, as the same use-value cannot be exchanged for itself.

In the collection of various use-values or commodities, we see a variety of different useful labors—types, species, subspecies, varieties—forming a social division of labor. This division of labor is a condition for commodity production, although commodity production is not a necessary condition for social division of labor. In ancient Indian communities, labor was socially divided, but products did not become commodities. Similarly, in every factory, labor is systematically divided, but this division does not occur through the exchange of individual products. Only products of independent, private labor confront each other as commodities.

Thus, in the use-value of each commodity, there is a specific productive activity or useful labor. Use-values can only confront each other as commodities if different kinds of useful labor are embedded in them. In a society where products generally take the form of commodities, this qualitative difference in useful labor, carried out independently by private producers, develops into a complex system—a social division of labor.

However, it doesn’t matter whether the coat is worn by the tailor or the tailor's customer. In both cases, it acts as a use-value. The relationship between the coat and the labor producing it is also not changed by tailoring becoming a special profession, an independent branch of the social division of labor. Humans have tailored for thousands of years to meet the need for clothing before there was such a profession. The existence of a coat or any other non-natural element of material wealth has always required specific productive activity that adapts natural materials to human needs. As a creator of use-values, useful labor is a condition for human existence in all forms of society, a natural necessity to mediate the metabolism between humans and nature, and thus to sustain human life.

Use-values like coats and linen, or commodities, are combinations of two elements: natural material and labor. If we subtract the sum of different useful labors in the coat and linen, a material substrate always remains that exists naturally without human intervention. In production, humans can only change the forms of natural substances, similar to how nature works. Moreover, in this process of shaping, humans are continually assisted by natural forces. Therefore, labor is not the only source of the use-values it produces. Labor is their father, as William Petty says, and the earth is their mother.

Now, let’s move from the commodity as a use-value to its value.

By our assumption, the coat has twice the value of the linen. This is just a quantitative difference that doesn't interest us initially. We recall that if the value of a coat is twice that of 10 yards of linen, then 20 yards of linen have the same value as one coat. As values, the coat and linen are things of the same substance, objective expressions of similar labor. But tailoring and weaving are qualitatively different kinds of labor. There are social conditions where the same person alternately tailors and weaves, making these different forms of labor mere modifications of the same individual’s work, not yet distinct functions of different individuals, much like the coat made by the tailor today and the pants made by him tomorrow are just variations of the same individual’s labor. Additionally, in our capitalist society, depending on the changing demand for labor, a given portion of human labor alternates between tailoring and weaving. This change in labor forms may not occur without friction, but it must happen. If we disregard the specific nature of the productive activity and thus the useful character of labor, what remains is that it is an expenditure of human labor power. Tailoring and weaving, though qualitatively different productive activities, are both expenditures of human brain, muscle, nerves, hands, etc., and in this sense, both are human labor. They are just two different forms of expending human labor power. The value of a commodity represents human labor in general, an expenditure of human labor power in general. Like in bourgeois society, where a general or banker plays a significant role while the mere human being plays a minor role, it is the same with human labor here. It is an expenditure of simple labor power, which on average, every ordinary person possesses without special development. Simple average labor itself varies in character across different countries and cultural epochs but is given in a specific society. More complex labor counts as intensified or rather multiplied simple labor, so that a smaller quantity of complex labor equals a larger quantity of simple labor. This reduction happens continuously, as experience shows. A commodity may be the product of the most complex labor, but its value equals that of the product of simple labor and thus represents only a certain amount of simple labor. The different proportions in which various types of labor are reduced to simple labor are determined by a social process behind the producers’ backs and appear as given by tradition. For simplicity, all types of labor power are treated directly as simple labor power, sparing the trouble of reduction.

So, just as in the values of the coat and linen the difference in their use-values is abstracted, in the labor that creates these values, the difference in their useful forms, tailoring, and weaving, is also abstracted. While the use-values of the coat and linen combine specific productive activities with cloth and yarn, the values of the coat and linen are just homogeneous labor material. Thus, the labor contained in these values is not considered by its productive relationship to cloth and yarn but only as expenditure of human labor power. Elements of the use-values of coat and linen are tailoring and weaving due to their distinct qualities; the substance of the coat's and linen's values is their labor, abstracted from their specific quality, possessing only the quality of human labor.

However, the coat and linen are not just values in general, but values of a certain magnitude, and we assumed the coat is worth twice as much as 10 yards of linen. What causes this difference in value? The linen contains only half as much labor as the coat, so twice the labor time is required to produce the coat.

Thus, concerning use-value, the labor contained in the commodity is only considered qualitatively; regarding value, it is considered only quantitatively, once it is reduced to human labor without any particular quality. There, the focus is on how and what of labor, here on its how much, its duration. Since the value of a commodity represents the amount of labor contained in it, commodities must always be of equal value in a certain proportion.

If the productivity of all useful labor required to produce a coat remains unchanged, the value of the coats rises with their quantity. If 1 coat = x, then 2 coats = 2x labor days, etc. But if the labor necessary to produce a coat doubles or halves, one coat will be worth as much as two coats before, or two coats will be worth as much as one coat before, even though a coat serves the same purpose and the useful labor in it remains of the same quality. But the amount of labor used in its production has changed.

A greater quantity of use-value constitutes a larger material wealth, two coats more than one. Two coats can clothe two people, one coat can clothe only one, etc. However, the increasing mass of material wealth can correspond with a simultaneous decline in its value. This opposite movement arises from the dual nature of labor. Productivity always refers to useful, concrete labor and determines the effectiveness of purposeful productive activity in a given time. Useful labor becomes a richer or poorer source of products directly proportional to the increase or decrease in its productivity. On the other hand, a change in productivity does not affect the labor represented in value itself. Since productivity belongs to the concrete form of useful labor, it cannot affect labor once abstracted from its concrete useful form. Therefore, the same labor always produces the same value in the same time periods, regardless of changes in productivity. But it yields different quantities of use-values in the same period: more if productivity rises, less if it falls. The same change in productivity that increases the quantity of use-values reduces the value of this increased total if it reduces the total labor time necessary for production, and vice versa.

All labor is both an expenditure of human labor power in a physiological sense and, as such, forms the value of commodities. It is also an expenditure of human labor power in a specific, purposeful form, and as such, it produces use-values.