ounts of private labor, but equal amounts of human labor in general.
An unskillful smith might take as long to make five horseshoes as it
would take a skillful smith to make ten. But society does not fix the
price according to accidental lack of skill of the one, it recognises
only human labor in general, the human labor of the ordinary normal
skilled smith. Each of the five horseshoes then made by the first does
not have any more value than each of the other ten which were made in
the same time as the five. Only so far as is socially necessary does
private labor comprehend human labor in general.

Therefore I maintain that a commodity has a certain value, 1st.
because it is a socially useful product, 2nd. because it is produced
by a private individual for private profit, 3d. because while it is a
product of private labor, it is, at the same time, unconsciously and
involuntarily a social product and exchanges socially according to a
definite social standard, 4th. this standard is not expressed in terms
of labor, in so many hours, but in another commodity. If, therefore, I
say that this clock is worth this piece of cloth and that they are
both worth fifty marks, I say that in the clock, the cloth and the
gold there is an equal amount of social labor. I also affirm that the
amounts of social labor time in them are socially measured and found
to be equal, not directly and absolutely however, as one measures
labor time in hours or days, but in a round about fashion, relatively,
by means of exchange. I cannot therefore express this certain amount
of labor-time in labor hours, since their number is not known to me,
but I can express it relatively in terms of another commodity, which
has the same amount of labor time incorporated in it. The clock is
worth as much as the piece of cloth.

But while the production of commodities and the exchange of
commodities compel the society resting upon them to take this
roundabout course, they are impelled to a shortening of the process.
They separate from the mass of commodities one sovereign commodity, in
which the value of all other commodities can be universally expressed,
a commodity which is the complete incarnation of social labor, and,
against which, all other commodities may be set in direct
comparison--gold. Gold already germinates in the idea of value, it is
only developed value. But since the commodity value exists in gold
also, itself being a commodity, a new factor arises in