Editing Simple commodity production (section)

==Textual sources of the concept==
In ''[[The Wealth of Nations]]'' (1776), [[Adam Smith]] introduces the concept of simple commodity production as follows:

{{Blockquote|"In that early and rude state of society which precedes both the accumulation of stock [of capital] and the appropriation of land, the proportion between the quantities of labour necessary for acquiring different objects seems to be the only circumstance which can afford any rule for exchanging them for one another. (…) In this state of things, the whole produce of labour belongs to the labourer; and the quantity of labour commonly employed in acquiring or producing any commodity, is the only circumstance which can regulate the quantity of labour which it ought commonly to purchase, command, or exchange for."<ref>[[Adam Smith]], ''[[The Wealth of Nations]]'', ed. [[Edwin Cannan]]. London: Methuen & Co., 1904, Book 1, Chapter 6, pp. 49-50.</ref> }}

Smith then contrasts simple commodity production with capitalist production involving wage labour:

{{Blockquote|"As soon as [a capital] stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons, some of them will naturally employ it in setting to work industrious people, whom they will supply with materials and subsistence, in order to make a profit by the sale of their work, or by what their labour adds to the value of the materials. (…) [The employer] could have no interest to employ [workers], unless he expected from the sale of their work something more than what was sufficient to replace his stock to him; and he could have no interest to employ a great stock rather than a small one, unless his profits were to bear some proportion to the extent of his stock."<ref>[[Adam Smith]], [[The Wealth of Nations]], ed. [[Edwin Cannan]]. London: Methuen & Co., 1904, Book 1, Chapter 6, p. 50.</ref> }}

In a conspectus and critique of [[Adam Smith]]'s theory of value, Marx similarly gives a brief description of simple commodity production (although admittedly he did not use that terminology):

{{Blockquote|"Let us assume that all workers are producers of commodities, and not only produce their commodities but also sell them. The value of these commodities is determined by the necessary labour-time contained in them. If therefore the commodities are sold at their value, the labourer buys with one commodity, which is the product of twelve hours’ labour-time, another twelve hours’ labour-time in the form of another commodity, that is to say, twelve hours’ labour-time which is embodied in another use-value. The value of his labour is therefore equal to the value of his commodity; that is, it is equal to the product of twelve hours’ labour-time. The selling and buying again, in a word, the whole process of exchange, the metamorphosis of the commodity, alters nothing in this. It alters only the form of the use-value in which this twelve hours’ labour-time appears. The value of labour is therefore equal to the value of the product of labour."<ref>[[Karl Marx]], ''[[Theories of Surplus Value]] [1862-63]'', Part 1. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978, chapter 3, p. 71-72 or ''[[Marx/Engels Collected Works]]'' (MECW), Vol. 30, p. 378.</ref> }}

In his 1894 preface to ''Capital, Volume 3'', Friedrich Engels argued that:

{{Blockquote|"...at the beginning of Volume 1... Marx takes simple commodity production as his historical presupposition, only later, proceeding from this basis, to come on to capital... he proceeds... from the simple commodity and not from a conceptually and historically secondary form, the commodity as already modified by capitalism".<ref>Friedrich Engels, Preface to Karl Marx, ''Capital, Volume 3'', London: Penguin classics, 1991, p. 103.</ref>}}

This interpretation by Engels closely followed what Marx himself stated in his 1864 manuscript titled ''Results of the immediate process of production'':

{{Blockquote|"The commodity that emerges from capitalist production is different from the commodity we began with as the element, the precondition of capitalist production. We began with the individual commodity viewed as an autonomous article in which a specific amount of labour-time is objectified and which therefore has an exchange-value of a definite amount. (...) The ''individual commodity'' viewed as the product, the actual elementary component of capital that has been generated and reproduced, differs then from the individual commodity with which we began, and which we regarded as an ''autonomous'' article, as the presupposition [''Voraussetzung''] of capital formation."<ref>Karl Marx, "Results of the immediate process of production", in: Karl Marx, ''[[Capital, Volume I]]'', Penguin 1976, p. 953 and p. 966 (translation corrected); another, later translation by Ben Fowkes is available in ''Marx Engels Collected Works'' (MECW), Vol. 34, 1994, pp. 355-466, at pp. 355-356, and pp. 376-377.</ref>}}

However, the interpretation by Engels arguably did not completely match what Marx said about his own approach. In his critical notes on Adolph Wagner's ''Textbook on political economy'' (1879), Marx said about his analysis of the commodity form in ''Capital, Volume 1'' that:

{{Blockquote|"What I proceed from is the simplest social form in which the product of labour presents itself in contemporary society, and this is the "commodity." This I analyse, initially in the form in which it appears."<ref>Karl Marx, ''Notes on Adolph Wagner's "Lehrbuch der politischen Ökonomie"'', 1879.[https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/01/wagner.htm]</ref>}}

Here Marx states clearly, that in the first chapter of ''Capital Vol. 1'' he was talking about the commodity as the simplest traded object "in ''contemporary society''", and ''not'' about a simple commodity in ''pre-capitalist'' society.<ref>This interpretation is consistent with the first sentence of the first chapter of ''Capital, Vol. 1'': “The wealth of societies '''in which the capitalist mode of production prevails''' appears as an 'immense collection of commodities '…” (Marx, Capital Vol. 1, Penguin edition, 1976, p. 125, emphasis added) and is also consistent with the first sentence of the first chapter of ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'' (1859): “The wealth '''of bourgeois society''', at first sight, presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities…” (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977, p. 27, emphasis added).</ref> Point is, when Marx first analyzes a commodity as such (as a very simple category of trade), he disregards how exactly the commodity is produced and how specifically it is traded. He just examines the commodity (in his own words) "as an autonomous article", as a separate thing just as it observably appears in an everyday trading relation - without introducing all sorts of assumptions about how and where it originated, or what it will be used for. Put another way, Marx is talking about simple commodity ''circulation'', not simple commodity ''production'', although the former could assume the latter (the simple exchange of a commodity could be preceded by different forms of producing it).<ref>"In his Capital, Marx first analyses the simplest, most ordinary and fundamental, most common and everyday ''relation'' of bourgeois (commodity) society, a relation encountered billions of times, viz., the exchange of commodities." [[Vladimir I. Lenin]], "On the Question of Dialectics". ''Lenin Collected Works'', Vol. 38 (4th Edition). Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976,  pp. 357-361.[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/misc/x02.htm]</ref>

In his 1895 afterword ''Supplement and addendum to Volume 3 of Capital'', Friedrich Engels elaborates the concept of simple commodity production as follows:

{{Blockquote|”... Marx's [[law of value]] applies universally, as much as any economic laws do apply, for the entire period of simple commodity production, i.e. up to the time at which this undergoes a modification by the onset of the capitalist form of production. Up till then, prices gravitate to the values determined by Marx's law and oscillate around these values, so that the more completely simple commodity production develops, the more do average prices coincide with values for longer periods when not interrupted by external violent disturbances, and with the insignificant variations we mentioned earlier. Thus the Marxian law of value has a universal economic validity for an era lasting from the beginning of the exchange that transforms products into commodities down to the fifteenth century of our epoch. But [[Commodity (Marxism)|commodity exchange]] dates from a time before any written history, going back to at least 3500 B.C. in Egypt, and 4000 B.C. or maybe even 6000 B.C. in Babylon; thus the law of value prevailed for a period of some five to seven millennia.”<ref>Friedrich Engels, ’Supplement and addendum to Volume 3 of Capital’’, p. 1037 in Karl Marx, ''Capital, Volume 3''. London: Penguin Classics reprint, 1991.</ref>}}

Again, Engels based himself on (and references) what Marx himself had said – in chapter 10 of ''Capital, Volume 3'' (on the equalization of rates of profit by competition):

{{Blockquote|”The exchange of commodities at their values, or at approximately these values… [Marx writes] corresponds to a much lower stage of development than the exchange at [[prices of production]], for which a definite degree of capitalist development is needed. Whatever may be the ways in which the prices of different commodities are first established or fixed in relation to one another, the [[law of value]] governs their movement. When the labour-time required for their production falls, prices fall; and where it rises, prices rise, as long as other circumstances remain equal. Apart from the way in which the law of value governs prices and their movement, it is also quite apposite to view the values of commodities not only as theoretically prior to the prices of production, but also as historically prior to them. This applies to those conditions in which the means of production belong to the worker, and this condition is to be found, in both the ancient and the modern world among peasant proprietors and handicraftsmen who work for themselves. This agrees, moreover, with the opinion we expressed previously, viz. that the development of products into commodities arises from exchange between different communities, and not between the members of one and the same community. This is true not only for the original condition, but also for later social conditions based on slavery and serfdom, and for the guild organization of handicraft production, as long as the means of production involved in each branch of production can be transferred from one sphere to another only with difficulty, and the different spheres of production therefore relate to one another, within certain limits, like foreign countries or communistic communities.”<ref>Karl Marx, ''Capital, Volume 3''. London: Penguin Classics reprint, 1991, p. 277-278 and pp. 1033-1034</ref> }}