007-The-Fetishism-of-Commodities-and-the-Secret-Thereof

Section 4: The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof

商品拜物教的秘密

A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily
understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing,
abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. So far as it is a
value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it, whether we consider it from
the point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying human
wants, or from the point that those properties are the product of human labour.
It is as clear as noon-day, that man, by his industry, changes the forms of the
materials furnished by Nature, in such a way as to make them useful to him. The
form of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a table out of it. Yet, for
all that, the table continues to be that common, every-day thing, wood. But, so
soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something
transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation
to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden
brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than “table-turning” ever was.

乍一看，商品很简单；再一看，商品很奇怪。它充斥着形而上学的微妙和神学的怪诞。它作为使用价值，被我们生产出来，满足我们的需要，这并不神秘。人利用工业技术改变自然界的材料，使其对人有用。人改造了木头的形式，使其成为桌子，但桌子仍旧是木头，是看得见摸得着的物。然而，它一旦成为商品，就超越了五感。它不仅以物质的肉体立于世上，而且以极致的怪诞横在心间。【也是科研，也是诗篇。】

The mystical character of commodities does not originate, therefore, in their
use value. Just as little does it proceed from the nature of the determining
factors of value. For, in the first place, however varied the useful kinds of
labour, or productive activities, may be, it is a physiological fact, that they
are functions of the human organism, and that each such function, whatever may
be its nature or form, is essentially the expenditure of human brain, nerves,
muscles, &c. Secondly, with regard to that which forms the ground-work for the
quantitative determination of value, namely, the duration of that expenditure,
or the quantity of labour, it is quite clear that there is a palpable difference
between its quantity and quality. In all states of society, the labour time that
it costs to produce the means of subsistence, must necessarily be an object of
interest to mankind, though not of equal interest in different stages of
development. And lastly, from the moment that men in any way work for one
another, their labour assumes a social form.

商品的神秘性并非源于其使用价值。它也并非源于Value的决定因素。因为，首先，任何有用劳动/生产活动，在生理学上，都是人体机能，无论其内容如何、形式如何，都是人类的脑、神经、肌肉等的耗费。其次，关于决定Value数量的基础（即劳动数量/劳动耗费时间），显然，劳动的量和劳动的质是有明显区别的。在任何社会，生产生活资料的劳动时间，都是人类关心的问题，虽然在不同发展阶段上的关心程度不同。最后，从人们以某种方式相互为对方生产产品时起，他们的劳动就具有了社会的形式。【总结起来就是，Value的决定因素，在任何社会形态下都是一样的。而商品的神秘性却只出现在特定的社会形态（如资本主义社会）中，这就说明商品的神秘性并非源于Value的决定因素。】

Whence, then, arises the enigmatical character of the product of labour, so soon
as it assumes the form of commodities? Clearly from this form itself. The
equality of all sorts of human labour is expressed objectively by their products
all being equally values; the measure of the expenditure of labour power by the
duration of that expenditure, takes the form of the quantity of value of the
products of labour; and finally the mutual relations of the producers, within
which the social character of their labour affirms itself, take the form of a
social relation between the products.

那么，劳动产品一旦采取商品形式就出现的不可思议的性质，从何而来呢？显然是从商品形式本身而来。人类劳动产品的Value的同质可比，表现出了人类劳动的同质可比。对人类劳动力耗费的度量，采取了“劳动产品的Value的量”的形式。我们在生产者之间的关系中，可以证实劳动的社会性质的存在。生产者之间的关系，采取了“他们的产品的社会关系”的形式。【A takes the form of B. Marx老喜欢用这个句式了。这话的意思是：表面上是B，实际上是A；B表现出了A，A用B的形式表现出来；A采取了B的形式。】

A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social
character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon
the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum
total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing
not between themselves, but between the products of their labour. This is the
reason why the products of labour become commodities, social things whose
qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses. In
the same way the light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective
excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside
the eye itself. But, in the act of seeing, there is at all events, an actual
passage of light from one thing to another, from the external object to the eye.
There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with
commodities. There, the existence of the things quâ commodities, and the value
relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have
absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material
relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between men,
that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In
order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the
mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of
the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering
into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of
commodities with the products of men’s hands. This I call the Fetishism which
attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as
commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of
commodities.

商品之所以神秘，就在于，在商品交换中，个人劳动的社会性质，呈现为劳动产品的性质；就在于，个人劳动与社会总劳动之间的关系，不仅呈现为人与人的关系，而且呈现为劳动产品之间的关系。【商品之间的交换关系，不受生产者的掌控。也就是说，他无法决定自己的商品能否卖掉，能否卖个好价钱。在他看来，这件至关重要的事，不受他的支配，那一定是受某种神秘力量的支配。因此，他会认为，这神秘性质属于商品，而不属于人与人的关系。】这就是为什么，劳动产品成为了商品，就成为了可感知又不可感知的社会存在。类比一下，某物的光射入眼睛，我们会认为那是物的形象，而不是视神经的兴奋。【而实际上，只是发生了“视神经的兴奋”这件事，“物的形象”我我们头脑运动的产物。此处纠缠了我几个小时。】但在“看”这件事上，还是真真切切地发生了“光射入眼睛”这件物理上存在的事的。在商品上就不是这样。形成商品的存在物、劳动产品之间的Value关系，与它们的物理属性无关。那只是一个人与人的社会关系，但在人的头脑中，这个社会关系采取了物与物的关系的形式。因此，要找一个类别，我们就必须仰赖迷雾重重的宗教世界。在宗教世界，人脑的产物表现为附有生命的、相互建立关系并与人建立关系的独立存在的东西。在商品世界里，个人劳动产品也是如此。【个人劳动产品表现为附有生命的、相互建立关系并与人建立关系的独立存在的东西。】劳动产品一旦作为商品被生产，人就会赋予它神秘性，从而崇拜它。因此这种崇拜是同商品生产无法分离的。我称之为商品拜物教。

This Fetishism of commodities has its origin, as the foregoing analysis has
already shown, in the peculiar social character of the labour that produces
them.

如前所述，商品拜物教来源于生产商品的劳动的社会性质。

As a general rule, articles of utility become commodities, only because they are
products of the labour of private individuals or groups of individuals who carry
on their work independently of each other. The sum total of the labour of all
these private individuals forms the aggregate labour of society. Since the
producers do not come into social contact with each other until they exchange
their products, the specific social character of each producer’s labour does not
show itself except in the act of exchange. In other words, the labour of the
individual asserts itself as a part of the labour of society, only by means of
the relations which the act of exchange establishes directly between the
products, and indirectly, through them, between the producers. To the latter,
therefore, the relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of
the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but
as what they really are, material relations between persons and social relations
between things. It is only by being exchanged that the products of labour
acquire, as values, one uniform social status, distinct from their varied forms
of existence as objects of utility. This division of a product into a useful
thing and a value becomes practically important, only when exchange has acquired
such an extension that useful articles are produced for the purpose of being
exchanged, and their character as values has therefore to be taken into account,
beforehand, during production. From this moment the labour of the individual
producer acquires socially a two-fold character. On the one hand, it must, as a
definite useful kind of labour, satisfy a definite social want, and thus hold
its place as part and parcel of the collective labour of all, as a branch of a
social division of labour that has sprung up spontaneously. On the other hand,
it can satisfy the manifold wants of the individual producer himself, only in so
far as the mutual exchangeability of all kinds of useful private labour is an
established social fact, and therefore the private useful labour of each
producer ranks on an equality with that of all others. The equalisation of the
most different kinds of labour can be the result only of an abstraction from
their inequalities, or of reducing them to their common denominator, viz.
expenditure of human labour power or human labour in the abstract. The two-fold
social character of the labour of the individual appears to him, when reflected
in his brain, only under those forms which are impressed upon that labour in
every-day practice by the exchange of products. In this way, the character that
his own labour possesses of being socially useful takes the form of the
condition, that the product must be not only useful, but useful for others, and
the social character that his particular labour has of being the equal of all
other particular kinds of labour, takes the form that all the physically
different articles that are the products of labour, have one common quality,
viz., that of having value.

个人相互独立地生产产品，才会使产品成为商品。个人劳动的总和，就是社会总劳动。生产者们只在交换产品时才踏入社会关系，所以，个人劳动的社会性质只会在交换行为中展现出来。换句话说，只有劳动产品之间发生交换（从而生产者之间发生交换），个人劳动才拿到了社会劳动一部分的资格。【最终卖不掉的商品，就是垃圾。】因此，对生产者来说，个人劳动与社会劳动的关系，不是表现为个人直接的社会关系，而是表现为人与人的物的关系和物与物的社会关系。【物被视为“神”】只有通过交换，劳动产品才获得了统一的社会状态，与其肉体形式不同的状态。只有为了交换而生产产品时，产品的使用价值和Value的区分才显得重要，产品的Value性质才在生产过程中被关注到。从此，个人劳动取得了二重的社会性质。一方面，个人劳动必须能满足某种社会需要，从而成为社会总劳动的一部分，成为自然形成的社会分工的一部分。另一方面，只有当每种个人劳动都可以与其他个人劳动交换时（个人劳动与其他劳动等同时），个人劳动才能满足自己的多种需要。不同种劳动之间的划等号，只能是在抽象人类劳动方面的等号。个人劳动的二重社会性质，以日常的交换活动的形式，反映在个人劳动者脑中。这样，个人劳动的[对社会有用]这个性质，采取了[产品不仅要有用，而且要对别人有用]的形式。个人劳动的[与其他各种劳动等同]的社会性质，采取了[各种不同的劳动产品都有Value]的形式。

Hence, when we bring the products of our labour into relation with each other as
values, it is not because we see in these articles the material receptacles of
homogeneous human labour. Quite the contrary: whenever, by an exchange, we
equate as values our different products, by that very act, we also equate, as
human labour, the different kinds of labour expended upon them. We are not aware
of this, nevertheless we do it. Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a
label describing what it is. It is value, rather, that converts every product
into a social hieroglyphic. Later on, we try to decipher the hieroglyphic, to
get behind the secret of our own social products; for to stamp an object of
utility as a value, is just as much a social product as language. The recent
scientific discovery, that the products of labour, so far as they are values,
are but material expressions of the human labour spent in their production,
marks, indeed, an epoch in the history of the development of the human race,
but, by no means, dissipates the mist through which the social character of
labour appears to us to be an objective character of the products themselves.
The fact, that in the particular form of production with which we are dealing,
viz., the production of commodities, the specific social character of private
labour carried on independently, consists in the equality of every kind of that
labour, by virtue of its being human labour, which character, therefore, assumes
in the product the form of value – this fact appears to the producers,
notwithstanding the discovery above referred to, to be just as real and final,
as the fact, that, after the discovery by science of the component gases of air,
the atmosphere itself remained unaltered.

因此，当人们等价交换他们的劳动产品时，并不是因为他们看到了这些产品包含着同质的抽象人类劳动。恰恰相反：他们使不同的产品相等从而能够交换，由此，他们才使得不同的人类劳动相等。他们没有意识到这一点，但是他们做到了这一点。因此，Value并没有自己亮明身份。其实是，Value把各种商品当作了它的象形文字。之后，人类想破译这象形文字，找到人类自己的产品的社会密码。使用价值的Value，就是产品的社会性质的语言。作为Value的劳动产品，是人类劳动的物质表现，这是人类发展史上划时代的科学发现。但劳动的社会性质在人们眼中呈现为物的性质，这一认识上的迷雾，并未因此发现而消散。【人类能够发现规律，但不能违反规律】人们发现了空气的构成，空气仍旧是原来的样子。人们发现了Value的性质，人们仍旧受商品生产形态的束缚。

What, first of all, practically concerns producers when they make an exchange,
is the question, how much of some other product they get for their own? in what
proportions the products are exchangeable? When these proportions have, by
custom, attained a certain stability, they appear to result from the nature of
the products, so that, for instance, one ton of iron and two ounces of gold
appear as naturally to be of equal value as a pound of gold and a pound of iron
in spite of their different physical and chemical qualities appear to be of
equal weight. The character of having value, when once impressed upon products,
obtains fixity only by reason of their acting and re-acting upon each other as
quantities of value. These quantities vary continually, independently of the
will, foresight and action of the producers. To them, their own social action
takes the form of the action of objects, which rule the producers instead of
being ruled by them. It requires a fully developed production of commodities
before, from accumulated experience alone, the scientific conviction springs up,
that all the different kinds of private labour, which are carried on
independently of each other, and yet as spontaneously developed branches of the
social division of labour, are continually being reduced to the quantitative
proportions in which society requires them. And why? Because, in the midst of
all the accidental and ever fluctuating exchange relations between the products,
the labour time socially necessary for their production forcibly asserts itself
like an over-riding law of Nature. The law of gravity thus asserts itself when a
house falls about our ears. The determination of the magnitude of value by
labour time is therefore a secret, hidden under the apparent fluctuations in the
relative values of commodities. Its discovery, while removing all appearance of
mere accidentality from the determination of the magnitude of the values of
products, yet in no way alters the mode in which that determination takes place.

生产者最关心的问题是，他们能得到多少其他商品，或者说，产品的交换比例是多少？当这些比例逐渐固定下来，它们就看起来像是产品的物理属性了。例如，一吨铁和2盎司金看起来是自然地有相同的Value，就像一磅铁和一磅金有相同的重量一样。产品交换的比例，仅由其包含的Value的量决定并固定下来。Value的变动，不受生产者的意愿、思维、行动的控制。生产者的社会活动采取了物的活动的形式。生产者感到，不是他们掌控物，而是物掌控他们。只有出现了发达的商品生产后，人类才能科学地发现：个人劳动彼此独立进行，它作为自然形成的社会分工，不断地被化为社会的比例标尺。为什么呢？因为，在产品间偶然的波动的交换关系中，生产产品的社会必要劳动时间作为自然规律强制地如“水往低处流”般为自己开辟道路。由劳动时间度量的Value隐藏在波动的商品交换关系中。Value的发现，消除了产品Value的波动表象，但绝不会消除这种波动。

Man’s reflections on the forms of social life, and consequently, also, his
scientific analysis of those forms, take a course directly opposite to that of
their actual historical development. He begins, post festum, with the results
of the process of development ready to hand before him. The characters that
stamp products as commodities, and whose establishment is a necessary
preliminary to the circulation of commodities, have already acquired the
stability of natural, self-understood forms of social life, before man seeks to
decipher, not their historical character, for in his eyes they are immutable,
but their meaning. Consequently it was the analysis of the prices of commodities
that alone led to the determination of the magnitude of value, and it was the
common expression of all commodities in money that alone led to the
establishment of their characters as values. It is, however, just this ultimate
money form of the world of commodities that actually conceals, instead of
disclosing, the social character of private labour, and the social relations
between the individual producers. When I state that coats or boots stand in a
relation to linen, because it is the universal incarnation of abstract human
labour, the absurdity of the statement is self-evident. Nevertheless, when the
producers of coats and boots compare those articles with linen, or, what is the
same thing, with gold or silver, as the universal equivalent, they express the
relation between their own private labour and the collective labour of society
in the same absurd form.

人类对社会生活的分析研究，是从发展之后的社会形式开始往前倒推的。在人类研究商品社会之前，商品的社会性质就已经被潜意识视为了自然性质。因此，人类只可能通过分析商品的价格来发现Value的决定因素，只可能通过分析Value的货币形式来发现Value的性质。然而，货币形式，这个商品世界的最终形式，隐藏了个人劳动的社会性质，隐藏了个人劳动者的社会关系。如果我说，衣服、鞋子与麻布有关系，因为麻布是抽象劳动的化身，那么这显然很荒谬。【没看懂。这哪里荒谬了？】然而，衣服、鞋子的生产者用衣服、鞋子与麻布（或作为一般等价物的金银）比较，他们正是通过这种荒谬的形式表达了他们的个人劳动与社会总劳动的关系。

The categories of bourgeois economy consist of such like forms. They are forms
of thought expressing with social validity the conditions and relations of a
definite, historically determined mode of production, viz., the production of
commodities. The whole mystery of commodities, all the magic and necromancy that
surrounds the products of labour as long as they take the form of commodities,
vanishes therefore, so soon as we come to other forms of production.

资产阶级经济学的范畴中就有这种形式。那些范畴表达了商品生产这种特定的、历史的生产方式的前提条件和社会关系，因而也只在商品社会中有效。商品生产模式一旦变为其他模式，商品的所有魔法就会烟消云散。

Since Robinson Crusoe’s experiences are a favourite theme with political
economists, let us take a look at him on his island. Moderate though he be, yet
some few wants he has to satisfy, and must therefore do a little useful work of
various sorts, such as making tools and furniture, taming goats, fishing and
hunting. Of his prayers and the like we take no account, since they are a source
of pleasure to him, and he looks upon them as so much recreation. In spite of
the variety of his work, he knows that his labour, whatever its form, is but the
activity of one and the same Robinson, and consequently, that it consists of
nothing but different modes of human labour. Necessity itself compels him to
apportion his time accurately between his different kinds of work. Whether one
kind occupies a greater space in his general activity than another, depends on
the difficulties, greater or less as the case may be, to be overcome in
attaining the useful effect aimed at. This our friend Robinson soon learns by
experience, and having rescued a watch, ledger, and pen and ink from the wreck,
commences, like a true-born Briton, to keep a set of books. His stock-book
contains a list of the objects of utility that belong to him, of the operations
necessary for their production; and lastly, of the labour time that definite
quantities of those objects have, on an average, cost him. All the relations
between Robinson and the objects that form this wealth of his own creation, are
here so simple and clear as to be intelligible without exertion, even to Mr.
Sedley Taylor. And yet those relations contain all that is essential to the
determination of value.

既然政治经济学家们最喜欢《鲁宾逊漂流记》的故事，我们就来看看鲁滨逊在岛上的生活吧。他再怎么节欲，也必须满足基本需求，因此他必须做各种工作，例如制作工具、制作家具、养山羊、钓鱼、打猎。我们不考虑他的祈祷了，因为祈祷是他的乐趣。他知道，他要做各种不同的生产活动，但无论他的劳动形式是怎样的，那都是他鲁滨逊的劳动，都是同样的人类劳动。生活需求本身迫使他在各种不同的生产活动上分配适当的时间。一项活动所占比例的大小，由其难度决定。鲁滨逊很快就根据经验掌握了这些比例，他从破船上抢救出表、账本、笔、墨水，开始像个地道的英国人那样记账了。他的账本记录着他的物品，生产这些物品的方法，生产每种物品平均耗费的劳动时间。鲁滨逊和他创造的财富之间的关系，在这里是如此得简单明了，即使连塞德利·泰勒先生(Mr. Sedley Taylor)不用费脑子也能了解。但这简单的关系已经包含了Value的所有决定因素。

Let us now transport ourselves from Robinson’s island bathed in light to the
European middle ages shrouded in darkness. Here, instead of the independent man,
we find everyone dependent, serfs and lords, vassals and suzerains, laymen and
clergy. Personal dependence here characterises the social relations of
production just as much as it does the other spheres of life organised on the
basis of that production. But for the very reason that personal dependence forms
the ground-work of society, there is no necessity for labour and its products to
assume a fantastic form different from their reality. They take the shape, in
the transactions of society, of services in kind and payments in kind. Here the
particular and natural form of labour, and not, as in a society based on
production of commodities, its general abstract form is the immediate social
form of labour. Compulsory labour is just as properly measured by time, as
commodity-producing labour; but every serf knows that what he expends in the
service of his lord, is a definite quantity of his own personal labour power.
The tithe to be rendered to the priest is more matter of fact than his blessing.
No matter, then, what we may think of the parts played by the different classes
of people themselves in this society, the social relations between individuals
in the performance of their labour, appear at all events as their own mutual
personal relations, and are not disguised under the shape of social relations
between the products of labour.

现在，让我们从鲁滨逊光明的小岛转移到黑暗的欧洲中世纪去吧。这里，没有独立的人，只有相互依赖的人，农奴和领主，附属国和宗主国，俗人和牧师。这里，物质生产的社会关系的特点，都是人身依附；在此基础上的生活领域的特点，亦是如此。但在这种人身依附的社会形式里，劳动及其产品的实质与形式是一致的（不像商品社会那样，表里不一。）劳动及其产品，以劳役和贡赋的形式流入社会。这里，具体劳动是劳动的社会形式。而在商品生产的社会中，抽象劳动是劳动的社会形式。徭役劳动与商品劳动一样，是用时间计量的。但每个农奴都知道，他为主人服务而耗费的，是他自己的劳动力的一部分。上缴给牧师的十一税，比牧师的祝福要清楚得多。中世纪的人们在劳动方面的社会关系，始终是人与人之间的关系；并没有被掩盖为“劳动产品之间的关系”。

For an example of labour in common or directly associated labour, we have no
occasion to go back to that spontaneously developed form which we find on the
threshold of the history of all civilised races. We have one close at hand in
the patriarchal industries of a peasant family, that produces corn, cattle,
yarn, linen, and clothing for home use. These different articles are, as regards
the family, so many products of its labour, but as between themselves, they are
not commodities. The different kinds of labour, such as tillage, cattle tending,
spinning, weaving and making clothes, which result in the various products, are
in themselves, and such as they are, direct social functions, because functions
of the family, which, just as much as a society based on the production of
commodities, possesses a spontaneously developed system of division of labour.
The distribution of the work within the family, and the regulation of the labour
time of the several members, depend as well upon differences of age and sex as
upon natural conditions varying with the seasons. The labour power of each
individual, by its very nature, operates in this case merely as a definite
portion of the whole labour power of the family, and therefore, the measure of
the expenditure of individual labour power by its duration, appears here by its
very nature as a social character of their labour.

要考察直接社会化的劳动，我们不必回溯到一切文明民族的历史初期。有个更近的例子，就是农村家长制生产，即一户农民家庭为了自用而生产粮食、牲畜、纱、麻布、衣服等。这些物品是家庭各个成员的不同的产品，但它们相互之间不是商品关系。不同的劳动，如耕、牧、纺、织、缝等，得到不同的产品。这些劳动直接就是社会职能，因为这个家庭中的职能，正如基于商品生产的社会那样，有一套自然形成的劳动分工系统。这个家庭中的工作分配、劳动时间，依据年龄、性别、自然条件等情况而定。个人劳动力本质上是家庭劳动力的一部分，因此，这个小社会（即这个家庭）的劳动的社会性质，就是以劳动力耗费的时间为度量标尺。

Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, a community of free
individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in
which the labour power of all the different individuals is consciously applied
as the combined labour power of the community. All the characteristics of
Robinson’s labour are here repeated, but with this difference, that they are
social, instead of individual. Everything produced by him was exclusively the
result of his own personal labour, and therefore simply an object of use for
himself. The total product of our community is a social product. One portion
serves as fresh means of production and remains social. But another portion is
consumed by the members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this portion
amongst them is consequently necessary. The mode of this distribution will vary
with the productive organisation of the community, and the degree of historical
development attained by the producers. We will assume, but merely for the sake
of a parallel with the production of commodities, that the share of each
individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour
time. Labour time would, in that case, play a double part. Its apportionment in
accordance with a definite social plan maintains the proper proportion between
the different kinds of work to be done and the various wants of the community.
On the other hand, it also serves as a measure of the portion of the common
labour borne by each individual, and of his share in the part of the total
product destined for individual consumption. The social relations of the
individual producers, with regard both to their labour and to its products, are
in this case perfectly simple and intelligible, and that with regard not only to
production but also to distribution.

现在我们设想这样一个自由个人的联合体，他们用公共生产资料进行劳动，他们的个人劳动有意识地组成联合体劳动力的一部分。【在一个农村家庭中生活一段时间，就能理解这句话了。落户地区的农村家庭就是这样生活的。Marx所说的共产主义就是把古代农民家庭的规模扩大到全社会、生产力发展到很高很高。】鲁滨逊是一个人生产，家庭是几个人生产。除此之外，鲁滨逊的生产与这个家庭的生产的特征是一致的。鲁滨逊生产的所有东西都是他的劳动成果，因此供他使用。联合体的总产品是社会的劳动成果。一部分用于更新生产资料，另一部分则是生活资料，由联合体的成员消费。因此，生活资料要在成员之间分配。联合体在各个历史阶段的生产组织方式和生产力不同，分配方式就随之不同。【社会主义各历史阶段，有各自的分配方式。】仅为与商品生产对比，我们假设，每个个人应分配到的生活资料份额，由其劳动时间决定。【多劳多得】那么，劳动时间就扮演了双重角色。为了保证联合体的各种生活资料有适当的比例，就需要让各种劳动保持适当的比例，就需要社会计划各种具体劳动应耗费的时间。另一方面，每个个人承担的劳动时间占社会总劳动的比例，也就决定了他应享有的生活资料的份额。【这才是计划经济的本质】在这里，个体之间在劳动方面和产品方面的关系，无论是生产时还是分配时，都是十分简单明了的。

The religious world is but the reflex of the real world. And for a society based
upon the production of commodities, in which the producers in general enter into
social relations with one another by treating their products as commodities and
values, whereby they reduce their individual private labour to the standard of
homogeneous human labour – for such a society, Christianity with its cultus of
abstract man, more especially in its bourgeois developments, Protestantism,
Deism, &c., is the most fitting form of religion. In the ancient Asiatic and
other ancient modes of production, we find that the conversion of products into
commodities, and therefore the conversion of men into producers of commodities,
holds a subordinate place, which, however, increases in importance as the
primitive communities approach nearer and nearer to their dissolution. Trading
nations, properly so called, exist in the ancient world only in its interstices,
like the gods of Epicurus in the Intermundia, or like Jews in the pores of
Polish society. Those ancient social organisms of production are, as compared
with bourgeois society, extremely simple and transparent. But they are founded
either on the immature development of man individually, who has not yet severed
the umbilical cord that unites him with his fellowmen in a primitive tribal
community, or upon direct relations of subjection. They can arise and exist only
when the development of the productive power of labour has not risen beyond a
low stage, and when, therefore, the social relations within the sphere of
material life, between man and man, and between man and Nature, are
correspondingly narrow. This narrowness is reflected in the ancient worship of
Nature, and in the other elements of the popular religions. The religious reflex
of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish, when the practical
relations of every-day life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and
reasonable relations with regard to his fellowmen and to Nature.

宗教世界是对现实世界的反映。在基于商品生产的社会里，生产者将自己的产品视为商品，视为Value，将个人劳动视为抽象劳动，以此方式踏入社会关系中。在这样的社会里，崇拜抽象人的基督教，特别是其契合资产阶级心理的进化形态，即新教、自然神教等，是最匹配的宗教形式。在古亚洲和其他古代生产方式里，我们发现，产品转化为商品，即生产者生产商品的情形，处于次要地位。但这种原始联合体越接近解体阶段，商品生产的比重就越大。商业民族只存在于古代世界的缝隙中，就像伊壁鸠鲁(Epicurus)理论中的神【这个理论蛮有趣】，就像波兰社会的犹太人。这些古代的社会生产组织，与资产阶级社会相比，是十分地简单透明。但这些古代社会要么以不成熟的未脱离血缘关系的个体组织（即部落）为基础，要么以直接的统治为基础。这些古代社会的劳动生产率比较低，因而当时人与人的物质关系、人与自然的物质关系相应地狭窄。它们也只能产生于和存在于这样的阶段。古代的自然宗教和民间宗教，反映了这种狭窄状态。只有当日常生活中的人与人的关系、人与自然的关系十分简单合理的时候，宗教才会消失。

The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material
production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as
production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in
accordance with a settled plan. This, however, demands for society a certain
material ground-work or set of conditions of existence which in their turn are
the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development.

只有当社会生活过程即物质生产过程，作为自由人联合体的产物，有意识地被他们计划控制的时候，社会的神秘面纱才会被揭开。但是，这需要有一定的物质基础或社会条件。而这社会条件是长期的痛苦的历史发展过程的产物。

Political Economy has indeed analysed, however incompletely, value and its
magnitude, and has discovered what lies beneath these forms. But it has never
once asked the question why labour is represented by the value of its product
and labour time by the magnitude of that value. These formulæ, which bear it
stamped upon them in unmistakable letters that they belong to a state of
society, in which the process of production has the mastery over man, instead of
being controlled by him, such formulæ appear to the bourgeois intellect to be as
much a self-evident necessity imposed by Nature as productive labour itself.
Hence forms of social production that preceded the bourgeois form, are treated
by the bourgeoisie in much the same way as the Fathers of the Church treated
pre-Christian religions.

政治经济学已经不完全地发现了Value的性质和数量，发现了Value形式背后藏着的东西。但政治经济学从未问过：为什么人们用产品的Value表示劳动？为什么人们用Value的数量表示劳动时间？一些游戏规则，只适用于某个社会阶段，只适用于生产过程控制人，而非人控制生产过程的阶段。这些规则，在资产阶级的思维中却成了大自然的铁律，像生产劳动一样的铁律。因此，在社会生产的资产阶级形式之前的那些形式，就被资产阶级当作天理不容的异类，就像教父对待基督教之前的宗教那样。

To what extent some economists are misled by the Fetishism inherent in
commodities, or by the objective appearance of the social characteristics of
labour, is shown, amongst other ways, by the dull and tedious quarrel over the
part played by Nature in the formation of exchange value. Since exchange value
is a definite social manner of expressing the amount of labour bestowed upon an
object, Nature has no more to do with it, than it has in fixing the course of
exchange.

自然界在形成交换价值的过程中的作用，那些关于这个问题的傻帽乏味的争论，侧面说明了，某些经济学家被商品拜物教（或劳动的社会性质的物的表象）误导到了何等扯淡的程度。交换价值是凝结在物中的劳动的社会表现，因此自然界跟它没有关系，它就像汇率一样不含自然因素。

The mode of production in which the product takes the form of a commodity, or is
produced directly for exchange, is the most general and most embryonic form of
bourgeois production. It therefore makes its appearance at an early date in
history, though not in the same predominating and characteristic manner as
now-a-days. Hence its Fetish character is comparatively easy to be seen through.
But when we come to more concrete forms, even this appearance of simplicity
vanishes. Whence arose the illusions of the monetary system? To it gold and
silver, when serving as money, did not represent a social relation between
producers, but were natural objects with strange social properties. And modern
economy, which looks down with such disdain on the monetary system, does not its
superstition come out as clear as noon-day, whenever it treats of capital? How
long is it since economy discarded the physiocratic illusion, that rents grow
out of the soil and not out of society?

产品采取商品形式的生产方式（即以交换为产品的生产目的），是资产阶级生产方式中最一般和最初级的方式。它早就出现了，只不过并非以占统治地位的、典型的状态出现。因此，它的拜物教性质相对容易被看破。但在更高级的形式中，这种简单的表象就消失了。货币主义的幻觉是从何而来呢？货币主义认为，作为货币的金银，不是代表生产者之间的社会关系，而是具有奇怪的社会属性的自然物质。现代经济学虽然蔑视货币主义，但是它对资本的迷信不也是明明白白的拜物教吗？重农主义认为，地租源于土地，并非源于社会。这种幻觉才破灭了多久啊？【现代经济学，五十步笑百步】

But not to anticipate, we will content ourselves with yet another example
relating to the commodity form. Could commodities themselves speak, they would
say: Our use value may be a thing that interests men. It is no part of us as
objects. What, however, does belong to us as objects, is our value. Our natural
intercourse as commodities proves it. In the eyes of each other we are nothing
but exchange values. Now listen how those commodities speak through the mouth of
the economist.

为避免涉及后续问题，我们只再讨论一个商品形式的例子。如果商品能说话，它们会说：“我们的使用价值固然是人关心的。但我们不关心使用价值。我们只关心Value。我们作为商品的交换活动证明了这一点。在对方眼中，我们除了交换价值外，什么都不是。”
现在，听听商品是如何借经济学家之口发言的。

“Value” – (i.e., exchange value) “is a property of things, riches” –
(i.e., use value) “of man. Value, in this sense, necessarily implies
exchanges, riches do not.”

“Riches” (use value) “are the attribute of men, value is the attribute of
commodities. A man or a community is rich, a pearl or a diamond is
valuable...” A pearl or a diamond is valuable as a pearl or a diamond.

“Value”（即交换价值）“是物的属性，财富”（即使用价值）“是人的属性。在这个意义上，Value必然暗含着交换，财富则不然。”
“财富”（即使用价值）“是人的属性，Value是商品的属性。一个人或一个社会是富裕的，一个珍珠或一个钻石是有Value的……”
一个珍珠或一个钻石，作为一个珍珠或一个钻石，是有Value的。

So far no chemist has ever discovered exchange value either in a pearl or a
diamond. The economic discoverers of this chemical element, who by-the-bye lay
special claim to critical acumen, find however that the use value of objects
belongs to them independently of their material properties, while their value,
on the other hand, forms a part of them as objects. What confirms them in this
view, is the peculiar circumstance that the use value of objects is realised
without exchange, by means of a direct relation between the objects and man,
while, on the other hand, their value is realised only by exchange, that is, by
means of a social process. Who fails here to call to mind our good friend,
Dogberry, who informs neighbour Seacoal, that, “To be a well-favoured man is the
gift of fortune; but reading and writing comes by Nature.”

到目前为止，没有哪个化学家在珍珠或钻石里发现了交换价值。发现了这个化学元素的经济学家们，自称具有敏锐批判力的经济学家们，却发现了，物的使用价值与其材料属性无关，而物的Value却是物的组成部分。他们的论据是这样一种奇怪的情况：物的使用价值无须交换即可实现，即通过人与物的关系实现【例如人吃掉馒头，人与馒头建立了关系】；另一方面，物的Value只能通过交换实现，即通过一个社会过程实现。这不禁让人想起我们的老朋友，道博雷（Dogberry），他告诫邻居西可尔（Seacoal）说：“成为富裕的人，那是境遇的造化；会读写却是天生的。”