Capital I. Chapter 1: The Commodity. Section 4

4. The Fetishism of the Commodity and Its Secret

• It is the transformation of the products of human labour into commodities that gives them “grotesque ideas”, or makes wooden tables dance of their own free will. That is when use-values have a double-life as values, this double life takes over; like the monster Edward Hyde, to Henry Jekyll the bore.

Capital I. Chapter 1: The Commodity. Section 3

3. The value-form, or exchange-value

• Commodities are only commodities because of their double form: their natural form and their value form.
• The objective character of commodities as values is “purely social” (139). Value “can only appear in the social relation between commodity and commodity” (139).
• When money is shown to be a value-form its mystery disappears. (First mention of money.)

Capital I. Chapter 1: The Commodity. Sections 1 & 2

1. The two factors of the commodity: use-value and value (substance of value magnitude of value)

• “The wealth of societies…” (125). The commodity appears as the elementary form of capitalism. Investigation begins with the commodity.