QUOTE : Exchange converts a good into a commodity, an object no longer intended<br />for the satisfaction of an individual need or brought into existence and<br />vanishing with that need. On the contrary, it is intended for society,<br />and its fate, now dependent on the laws which govern the social<br />circulation of goods, can be far more capricious than that of Odysseus;<br />for what is one-eyed Polyphemus compared with the argus-eyed customs<br />officials of Newport, or the fair Circe compared with the German meat<br />inspectors? It has become a commodity because its producers participate<br />in a specific social relationship in which they have to confront each<br />other as independent producers. Originally a natural, quite<br />unproblematic thing, a good comes to express a social relation, acquires<br />a social aspect. It is a product of labour, no longer merely a natural<br />quality but a social phenomenon. We must therefore discover the law<br />which governs this society as a producing and working community.<br />Individual labour now appears in a new aspect, as part of the total<br />labour force over which society disposes, and only from this point of<br />view does it appear as value-creating labour.