auntie vulgar

x commodity A = y commodity B or = z commodity C or = v commodity D, etc., etc.

100,000 pencils = 1 computer or = 1 ton of coffee, or = 50,000 erasers.

Here the value of commodity A, our commodity playing value in its relative form is now expressed in innumerable commodities. While this is hidden in the simple expression of value, here the fact that value expresses itself through commodities as congealed quantities of abstract, undifferentiated human labor is apparant in the exchangeability of one thing for anything else in the right quantitites. In short, the endless series of value expressions implies that the particular use-values in which the value appears is ‘a matter of indiference’. Value of 1 = value of 1 whether that value is borne by coffee or computers, erasers or pencils. Moreover, it is not the exchange of commodities which regulates the magnitude of their values. It is the magnitude of value of the comomdities which regulates the proportion in which they exchange.

As a matter of fact, the phrase ‘supply and demand’ is not to really enter our vocabulary set and analysis for another 2000 pages – that is in volume 3.

Of course what this expanded form also means is that the natural form of each commodity is now a particular equivalent form of value alongside so many other commodities playing or capable of playing the equivalent form. Many specific labors contained in this mass of equivalent forms, in the sea of these commodities, now count as so many forms of manifestation of human labor.

But this is not really new information. We arrived at all of this already through close examination of the simple expression of value. Similarly the questions and ‘defects’ of this form are the same.

The expanded form of value is merely the sum of all the simple expressions. The sum of 100,000 pencils = 1 computer or 100,000 pencils = 50,000 erasers. What should be all too clear at this point is that this expanded form of value implies the existence of the General Form of Value:

1 computer

50,000 erasers             =      100,000 pencils

1 ton coffee