Editing Simple commodity production (section)

== From simple commodity production to capitalist production ==
The large-scale global transformation of simple commodity production into capitalist production based on the [[wage labour]] of employees<ref>Deon Filmer, ''Estimating the world at work''. Background paper to the 1995 ''World Development Report: Workers in an Integrating World'', May 1995.[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=620678]</ref> occurred only in the last two centuries of human history. It is preceded by the strong growth of [[merchant]] trade, supported by credit from financiers who earn rents, profit and interest from the process.The merchants not only act as intermediary between producers and consumers, but also integrate more and more of production into a market economy. That is, more and more is produced for the purpose of market trade, rather than for own use. The initial result is known as "[[merchant capitalism]]", which flourished in Western European cities especially in the 17th and 18th centuries but already existed on a smaller scale in the 15th century and even earlier.<ref>Richard H. Britnell, ''The Commercialisation of English Society, 1000-1500''. Manchester University Press, 1997; Jairus Banaji, ''Commercial capitalism''. London: Verso, 2020.</ref>

However, the transformation of more and more simple commodity production into capitalist production which accompanies [[industrialisation]] requires profound changes in [[property]] relations, because it must be possible to trade freely in means of production and [[labour power]] (the [[factors of production]]). Only when that trade becomes possible, can the whole of production be reorganised to conform to commercial principles.

Marx describes capitalist society as "a society where the commodity-form is the universal form of the product of labour, hence the dominant social relation is the relation between people as possessors of commodities". He argues that "The capitalist epoch is... characterized by the fact that labour-power, in the eyes of the worker himself, takes on the form of a commodity which is his property; his labour consequently takes on the form of wage-labour... it is only from this moment that the commodity-form of the products of labour becomes universal." Thus, "...from the moment there is a free sale, by the worker himself, of labour power as a commodity... from then onwards... commodity production is generalized and becomes the typical form of production."<ref>Karl Marx, ''Capital, Volume I'', Penguin edition 1976, resp. p. 152, p. 274, p. 733.</ref>

In an 1864 manuscript, Marx emphasized specifically that:

{{Blockquote|"Capital cannot come into being except on the foundation of the circulation of commodities (including money), i.e. where trade has already grown to a certain given degree. For their part, however, the production and circulation of commodities do not at all imply the existence of the capitalist mode of production. On the contrary… they may be found even in 'pre-bourgeois modes of production'. They constitute the ''historical premiss'' of the capitalist mode of production. On the other hand, however, once the commodity has become the ''general form of the product'', then everything that is produced must assume that form; sale and purchase embrace not just excess produce, but its very substance, and the various conditions of production themselves appear as ''commodities'' which leave circulation and enter production only on the foundations of capitalist production. Hence if the ''commodity'' appears on the one hand as
the premiss of the formation of capital, it is also essentially the result, the product of capitalist production once it has become the ''universal elementary form of the product''. At earlier stages of production a part of what was produced took the form of commodities. Capital, however, necessarily produces its product as a ''commodity''. This is why as capitalist production, i.e. capital, develops, the general laws governing the commodity evolve in proportion; for example, the laws affecting value develop in the distinct form of the circulation of money."<ref>Marx, "Results of the immediate process of production", appendix in ''Capital, Volume 1''. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976, p. 1005.[https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch01.htm]</ref> }}

To reach the stage of a universal market, many legal, political, religious and technical restrictions imposed on commercial trade must be overcome. The unification of a "home market" among people in a country who can speak the same language typically stimulated [[nationalist]] ideologies. But depending on the existing social systems, the transformation might occur in many different ways.<ref>James Minahan, ''Encyclopedia of the stateless nations: ethnic and national groups around the world'' (4 vols.). Westport (Conn.): Greenwood Press, 2002.</ref> Typically, though, it has involved wars, violence and [[revolution]]s, since people were unwilling to just give away assets, rights and income that they previously had.<ref>"In fact the veiled slavery of the wage-labourers in Europe needed the unqualified slavery of the New World as its pedestal. (…) If money, according to [a critique in 1842 of public finance by monsieur Marie] Augier, 'comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,' capital comes dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt." - Karl Marx, ''Capital, Vol. 1''. Penguin edition 1976, pp. 925-926 (Augier's critique of public finance is downloadable from the Internet Archive).</ref> Communally owned property, hereditary land ownership, the property of religious orders and state property all had to be privatised and amalgamated, in order to become tradeable assets in the process of [[capital accumulation]]. The [[ideology]] of the rising [[bourgeoisie]] typically emphasized the benefits of privately owned property for the purpose of wealth creation and industriousness.

Marx refers to this process as the [[primitive accumulation of capital]], a process which continues particularly in developing countries to this day. Marx shows that primitive accumulation involves to a large extent the expropriation of independent producers, who lose their means of production, and therefore are forced to work for an employer to earn a living. Typically, previously independent producers on the land (but also [[serfs]] and indentured labourers etc.) are [[proletarianisation|proletarianised]] and migrate to the urban centres, in search of work from an employer.

Simple commodity production nevertheless continues to occur on a large scale in the world economy, particularly in [[peasant]] production. It also persists within industrialised capitalist economies in the form of self-employment by free producers. Capitalist firms sometimes contract out specialised services to self-employed producers, who can produce them at a lower cost, or provide a superior product. Many digital products are produced by self-employed specialists who own their own computer (but who also depend on internet providers, and on access to rented software and websites).