ommodities (at least within the
confines of the society) and therewith their transformation into
value.

As soon as society comes into direct possession of the means of
production and undertakes production as a society, the labor of each,
however distinctive its special useful character may be, becomes
direct social labor. The amount of social labor existing in a product
does not then have to be established in a roundabout way, daily
experience shows the average amount of human labor necessary. Society
can easily determine how many hours of labor there are in a steam
engine, how many in a hectolitre of wheat of last harvest, how many in
a hundred square yards of cloth of a given quality. It cannot
therefore happen that the quantities of labor embodied in commodities,
which will then be absolutely and directly known, will be expressed in
terms of a measure which is only relative, fluctuating, inadequate and
absolute, in a third product, and not in their natural, adequate and
absolute measure, time. This would not happen any more than in
chemistry. One would express the atomic weights indirectly by means of
hydrogen if it were possible to express them absolutely in their
adequate measure, that is in real weight, that is in billions or
quadrillions of grammes. Under the foregoing conditions, then, society
ascribes no value to products. The simple fact that a hundred yards of
cloth have taken a thousand hours in their production need not be
expressed in any distorted or foolish fashion, they would be worth a
thousand labor hours. Society would then know how much labor each
object of use required for its creation. It would have to direct the
plan of production in accordance with the means of production to which
labor-force also belongs. The advantageous effects of the different
objects of use and their relations to each other and the creation of
the necessary means of labor would be the sole determinants of the
plan of production. People make things very easily without any
interference on the part of the much discussed "value."

The value idea is the most universal and the most comprehensive
expression of the economic conditions of the production of
commodities. In the idea of value there is not only the germ of gold
but also of those more highly developed forms of commodity production
and exchange. Since value is the expression of the social labor
incorporated in individual products, there lies the possibility of a
diffe