Grundisse
The labour of the individual looked at in the act of production itself,
is the money with which he directly buys the product, the object of his
particular activity; but it is a particular money, which buys
precisely only this specific product. In order to be general
money directly, it would have to be not a particular, but general
labour from the outset; i.e. it would have to be posited from
the outset as a link in general production. But on this
presupposition it would not be exchange which gave labour its general
character; but rather its presupposed communal character would
determine the distribution of products. The communal character of
production would make the product into a communal, general product from
the outset. The exchange which originally takes place in production --
which would not be an exchange of exchange values but of activities,
determined by communal needs and communal purposes -- would from the
outset include the participation of the individual in the communal world
of products. On the basis of exchange values, labour is posited
as general only through exchange. But on this foundation it
would be posited as such before exchange; i.e. the exchange of
products would in no way be the medium by which the
participation of the individual in general production is mediated.
Mediation must, of course, take place. In the first case, which
proceeds from the independent production of individuals -- no matter
how much these independent productions determine
and modify each other post festum through their
interrelations -- mediation takes place through the exchange of
commodities, through exchange value and through money; all these are
expressions of one and the same relation. In the second case, the presupposition
is itself mediated; i.e. a communal production, communality, is
presupposed as the basis of production. The labour of the individual is
posited from the outset as social labour. Thus, whatever the particular
material form of the product he creates or helps to create, what he has
bought with his labour is not a specific and particular product, but
rather a specific share of the communal production. He therefore has no
particular product to exchange. His product is not an exchange
value. The product does not first have to be transposed into a
particular form in order to attain a general character for the
individual. Instead of a division of labour, such as is necessarily
created with the exchange of exchange values, there would take place an
organization of labour whose consequence would be the participation of
the individual in communal consumption. In the first case the social
character of production is posited only post festum
with the elevation of products to exchange values and the exchange of
these exchange values. In the second case the social character of
production is presupposed, and participation in the world of
products, in consumption, is not mediated by the exchange of mutually
independent labours or products of labour. It is mediated, rather, by
the social conditions of production within which the individual is
active. Those who want to make the labour of the individual directly
into money (i.e. his product as well), into realized
exchange value, want therefore to determine that labour directly
as general labour, i.e. to negate precisely the conditions under which
it must be made into money and exchange values, and under which it
depends on private exchange. This demand can be satisfied only under
conditions where it can no longer be raised. Labour on the basis of
exchange values presupposes, precisely, that neither the labour of the
individual nor his product are directly general; that
the product attains this form only by passing through an objective
mediation by means of a form of money distinct from itself.