010-Section-2-The-Medium-of-Circulation-A-The-Metamorphosis-of-Commodities

Section 2: The Medium of Circulation

流通手段

A. The Metamorphosis of Commodities

商品的形态变化

We saw in a former chapter that the exchange of commodities implies
contradictory and mutually exclusive conditions. The differentiation of
commodities into commodities and money does not sweep away these
inconsistencies, but develops a modus vivendi, a form in which they can exist
side by side. This is generally the way in which real contradictions are
reconciled. For instance, it is a contradiction to depict one body as constantly
falling towards another, and as, at the same time, constantly flying away from
it. The ellipse is a form of motion which, while allowing this contradiction to
go on, at the same time reconciles it.

【前方高能】在上一章，我们看到商品交换包含着相互对立相互排斥的关系。商品分化为商品和货币，并不是扫除这些对立，而是发展出一种生存之道，一种对立双方可以共存的形式。一般来说，这是双方对立状态的消解方法。例如，一个物体A不断靠近物体B，同时又不断远离物体B，这描述了一个对立关系。椭圆是一种运动形式，使得这个对立得以继续和消解。

In so far as exchange is a process, by which commodities are transferred from
hands in which they are non-use-values, to hands in which they become
use-values, it is a social circulation of matter. The product of one form of
useful labour replaces that of another. When once a commodity has found a
resting-place, where it can serve as a use-value, it falls out of the sphere of
exchange into that of consumption. But the former sphere alone interests us at
present. We have, therefore, now to consider exchange from a formal point of
view; to investigate the change of form or metamorphosis of commodities which
effectuates the social circulation of matter.

商品从那些视其为非使用价值的人之手转移到那些视其为使用价值的人【即消费者】之手，从这一角度说，交换过程是社会的物质变化。一种具体劳动的产品替换了另一种。一旦商品到了消费者手里，它就退出了交换领域，进入消费领域。现在我们只关注交换领域。我们从商品形式变化的角度研究社会的物质变化。

The comprehension of this change of form is, as a rule, very imperfect. The
cause of this imperfection is, apart from indistinct notions of value itself,
that every change of form in a commodity results from the exchange of two
commodities, an ordinary one and the money-commodity. If we keep in view the
material fact alone that a commodity has been exchanged for gold, we overlook
the very thing that we ought to observe – namely, what has happened to the form
of the commodity. We overlook the facts that gold, when a mere commodity, is not
money, and that when other commodities express their prices in gold, this gold
is but the money-form of those commodities themselves.

人们对这个形式变化的理解很差。除了是因为对Value的概念模糊外，还因为一个商品的每次变化都是两个商品（即一个普通商品和一个货币商品）的交换引起的。如果我们只惦记着“商品变成了金”，我们就忽略了一件事，即“商品的形式发生了什么变化”。我们本应只将金视为普通商品，而不是视为货币。

Commodities, first of all, enter into the process of exchange just as they are.
The process then differentiates them into commodities and money, and thus
produces an external opposition corresponding to the internal opposition
inherent in them, as being at once use-values and values. Commodities as
use-values now stand opposed to money as exchange-value. On the other hand, both
opposing sides are commodities, unities of use-value and value. But this unity
of differences manifests itself at two opposite poles, and at each pole in an
opposite way. Being poles they are as necessarily opposite as they are
connected. On the one side of the equation we have an ordinary commodity, which
is in reality a use-value. Its value is expressed only ideally in its price, by
which it is equated to its opponent, the gold, as to the real embodiment of its
value. On the other hand, the gold, in its metallic reality, ranks as the
embodiment of value, as money. Gold, as gold, is exchange-value itself. As to
its use-value, that has only an ideal existence, represented by the series of
expressions of relative value in which it stands face to face with all other
commodities, the sum of whose uses makes up the sum of the various uses of gold.
These antagonistic forms of commodities are the real forms in which the process
of their exchange moves and takes place.

商品进入交换过程时，是其本来面目。交换过程将它们区分为普通商品和货币商品，也就产生了与商品内部使用价值和Value对立相应的外部对立。【没理解，使用价值和Value是怎样的对立呢？到底何为对立呢？我还是没有理解矛盾论啊。】作为使用价值的商品与作为交换价值的货币对立着。另一方面，对立双方都是商品，都是使用价值和Value的统一体。但这个统一体内的使用价值和Value是在等式相反的两极上显露自己的。这两极，既相排斥又相联结。等式左侧是普通商品，实际上是使用价值。它的Value只是用头脑中的价格表达着，它与Value的化身即金，对立着。金的肉体是Value的化身，即货币。金，作为金，只是交换价值。金的使用价值，
则在与其他各种商品的Value关系中，即在金与其他商品的扩展的Value关系中，表现出来。商品的交换过程，就发生在这些对立的形式中。【这些形式的变化，就是对商品交换过程的描述。】

Let us now accompany the owner of some commodity – say, our old friend the
weaver of linen – to the scene of action, the market. His 20 yards of linen has
a definite price, £2. He exchanges it for the £2, and then, like a man of the
good old stamp that he is, he parts with the £2 for a family Bible of the same
price. The linen, which in his eyes is a mere commodity, a depository of value,
he alienates in exchange for gold, which is the linen’s value-form, and this
form he again parts with for another commodity, the Bible, which is destined to
enter his house as an object of utility and of edification to its inmates. The
exchange becomes an accomplished fact by two metamorphoses of opposite yet
supplementary character – the conversion of the commodity into money, and the
re-conversion of the money into a commodity. The two phases of this
metamorphosis are both of them distinct transactions of the weaver – selling, or
the exchange of the commodity for money; buying, or the exchange of the money
for a commodity; and, the unity of the two acts, selling in order to buy.

现在我们陪同某商品的所有者，例如，织麻布者，来到市场上。他的20尺麻布的价格是200元。他把麻布换成200元，然后把200元换成一本家用圣经。麻布在他眼里只是商品，只是Value的载体。麻布被他转让出去，换取了金，即麻布的Value形式。然后他又转让了这个Value形式，换取了另一种商品，即圣经。他将圣经带回家使用。可见，交换过程是通过两个相反又相成的变形完成的，即商品变形为货币，货币变形为商品，也就是卖和买。卖和买这两个不同的阶段加起来，构成了“为买而卖”。

The result of the whole transaction, as regards the weaver, is this, that
instead of being in possession of the linen, he now has the Bible; instead of
his original commodity, he now possesses another of the same value but of
different utility. In like manner he procures his other means of subsistence and
means of production. From his point of view, the whole process effectuates
nothing more than the exchange of the product of his labour for the product of
some one else’s, nothing more than an exchange of products.

整个过程，使得织麻布者不再拥有麻布，而是拥有圣经；不再拥有最初的商品，而是拥有另一种Value相同使用价值不同的商品。他用这种方法取得各自生活资料和生产资料。对他来说，整个过程就是他的劳动产品与别人的劳动产品相交换。

The exchange of commodities is therefore accompanied by the following changes in
their form.

因此，商品交换是通过下述形式变化来实现的：

商品(Commodity) – 货币(Money) – 商品(Commodity).
C–––––– M ––––––C.

The result of the whole process is, so far as concerns the objects themselves, C
– C, the exchange of one commodity for another, the circulation of materialised
social labour. When this result is attained, the process is at an end.

整个过程的结果，是商品换商品，是社会劳动的流通。这个结果一达到，整个过程就结束了。

C – M. First metamorphosis, or sale

C–––––– M，第一个变形（即卖）

The leap taken by value from the body of the commodity, into the body of the
gold, is, as I have elsewhere called it, the salto mortale of the commodity. If
it falls short, then, although the commodity itself is not harmed, its owner
decidedly is. The social division of labour causes his labour to be as one-sided
as his wants are many-sided. This is precisely the reason why the product of his
labour serves him solely as exchange-value. But it cannot acquire the properties
of a socially recognised universal equivalent, except by being converted into
money. That money, however, is in some one else’s pocket. In order to entice the
money out of that pocket, our friend’s commodity must, above all things, be a
use-value to the owner of the money. For this, it is necessary that the labour
expended upon it, be of a kind that is socially useful, of a kind that
constitutes a branch of the social division of labour. But division of labour is
a system of production which has grown up spontaneously and continues to grow
behind the backs of the producers. The commodity to be exchanged may possibly be
the product of some new kind of labour, that pretends to satisfy newly arisen
requirements, or even to give rise itself to new requirements. A particular
operation, though yesterday, perhaps, forming one out of the many operations
conducted by one producer in creating a given commodity, may to-day separate
itself from this connexion, may establish itself as an independent branch of
labour and send its incomplete product to market as an independent commodity.
The circumstances may or may not be ripe for such a separation. To-day the
product satisfies a social want. Tomorrow the article may, either altogether or
partially, be superseded by some other appropriate product. Moreover, although
our weaver’s labour may be a recognised branch of the social division of labour,
yet that fact is by no means sufficient to guarantee the utility of his 20 yards
of linen. If the community’s want of linen, and such a want has a limit like
every other want, should already be saturated by the products of rival weavers,
our friend’s product is superfluous, redundant, and consequently useless.
Although people do not look a gift-horse in the mouth, our friend does not
frequent the market for the purpose of making presents. But suppose his product
turn out a real use-value, and thereby attracts money? The question arises, how
much will it attract? No doubt the answer is already anticipated in the price of
the article, in the exponent of the magnitude of its value. We leave out of
consideration here any accidental miscalculation of value by our friend, a
mistake that is soon rectified in the market. We suppose him to have spent on
his product only that amount of labour-time that is on an average socially
necessary. The price then, is merely the money-name of the quantity of social
labour realised in his commodity. But without the leave, and behind the back, of
our weaver, the old-fashioned mode of weaving undergoes a change. The
labour-time that yesterday was without doubt socially necessary to the
production of a yard of linen, ceases to be so to-day, a fact which the owner of
the money is only too eager to prove from the prices quoted by our friend’s
competitors. Unluckily for him, weavers are not few and far between. Lastly,
suppose that every piece of linen in the market contains no more labour-time
than is socially necessary. In spite of this, all these pieces taken as a whole,
may have had superfluous labour-time spent upon them. If the market cannot
stomach the whole quantity at the normal price of 2 shillings a yard, this
proves that too great a portion of the total labour of the community has been
expended in the form of weaving. The effect is the same as if each individual
weaver had expended more labour-time upon his particular product than is
socially necessary. Here we may say, with the German proverb: caught together,
hung together. All the linen in the market counts but as one article of
commerce, of which each piece is only an aliquot part. And as a matter of fact,
the value also of each single yard is but the materialised form of the same
definite and socially fixed quantity of homogeneous human labour.

织麻布者的Value从商品的肉体转到金的肉体上，像我在别处说过的，是商品惊险的一跃【名人名言】。如果跳跃失败，摔坏的不是商品，而是商品所有者。他的需求是多方面的，而社会分工使他的劳动成为单方面的。【他只能生产一种产品，却需要多种产品。】这就是为什么他的劳动产品对他来说只是交换价值。但他的商品只有转化为货币，才能获得社会公认的一般等价物形式。而货币，在别人的口袋里。为了把别人口袋里的货币吸引过来，他的商品必须对别人来说是使用价值。为此，他耗费的劳动必须是对社会有用，必须是社会劳动分工这颗树的一枝。但劳动分工是一颗自然生长的树，是一颗不断生长的树，而且不理会个人生产者的呐喊。某商品可能是一种新生劳动的产品，生产者预期它能满足某种新需求，或者创造某种新需求。一种特殊操作，昨天还是一个生产者的各种操作之一，今天就可能独立出来，被另一个生产者用来生产一个阶段性产品，拿到市场上卖。【产业链的上结点的增加。】这种变更的条件可能成熟了，可能未成熟。某种产品今天还能满足一种社会需求。明天它就可能被其他产品代替。此外，尽管这位织麻布者的劳动是社会公认的劳动分工树的一枝，他也不能保证他的20尺麻布被社会临幸。社会对麻布的需求是有限的，如果这个需求已经被竞争者的产品完全满足，那我们这位织麻布者的产品就成了多余的、无用的。收礼不嫌轻，但我们这位织麻布者决不是去市场上给社会送礼的。假设他的产品真的是对社会有用的，因而吸引到了货币，那问题就是：他能吸引多少货币？当然，答案就在商品的价格里，即在商品Value的指示器里。我们不考虑这位织麻布者的计算失误，这种失误会立即被市场修正。假设他的劳动时间等于社会必要劳动时间，那么，他的商品价格就是凝结在他的商品中的劳动量的货币名称。但是，不经过他的许可，麻布的生产方式就可能发生变革。他昨天的劳动时间还是社会必要劳动时间，今天就不是了。买家会用他的竞争者的报价来证明这一点。他真倒霉，他怎么有这么多同行呢。最后，假设市场上所有的麻布耗费的劳动时间都是社会必要劳动时间。纵然如此，在这些麻布上耗费的劳动时间也可能过多了。如果市场不能以每尺10元的标准价格吃下全部麻布，就证明社会总劳动时间耗费在织麻布形式上的比例太大了。这个效果，就像每个织麻布者的个人劳动时间都大于社会必要劳动时间一样。这真叫，同行是冤家。市场上的买家会将全部麻布当作一个商品，每一尺麻布都是此商品的一部分。实际上，每一尺麻布的Value也都是生产麻布的社会劳动的一个等份。

We see then, commodities are in love with money, but “the course of true love
never did run smooth.” The quantitative division of labour is brought about in
exactly the same spontaneous and accidental manner as its qualitative division.
The owners of commodities therefore find out, that the same division of labour
that turns them into independent private producers, also frees the social
process of production and the relations of the individual producers to each
other within that process, from all dependence on the will of those producers,
and that the seeming mutual independence of the individuals is supplemented by a
system of general and mutual dependence through or by means of the products.

我们看到，商品深爱着货币，但“真爱之路布满荆棘”。劳动分工的性质和数量，都是自发的、偶然的。因此，商品所有者发现：劳动分工使他们成为独立的个人生产者，也使社会生产过程不受他们控制，使他们之间的关系不受他们控制；一方面是表明上人与人的相互独立，一方面是每个人都依赖他人的产品。

The division of labour converts the product of labour into a commodity, and
thereby makes necessary its further conversion into money. At the same time it
also makes the accomplishment of this transubstantiation quite accidental. Here,
however, we are only concerned with the phenomenon in its integrity, and we
therefore assume its progress to be normal. Moreover, if the conversion take
place at all, that is, if the commodity be not absolutely unsaleable, its
metamorphosis does take place although the price realised may be abnormally
above or below the value.

劳动分工使劳动产品转化为商品，因而使劳动者必须将商品转化为货币。同时，劳动分工又使商品到货币的质变能否成功，成为偶然的。但这里我们只关注这个转化现象，因此假设这个转化是已经成功实现的。此外，只要商品不是绝对地卖不掉，就会发生商品到货币的转化。当然，价格可能高于或低于Value。

The seller has his commodity replaced by gold, the buyer has his gold replaced
by a commodity. The fact which here stares us in the face is, that a commodity
and gold, 20 yards of linen and £2, have changed hands and places, in other
words, that they have been exchanged. But for what is the commodity exchanged?
For the shape assumed by its own value, for the universal equivalent. And for
what is the gold exchanged? For a particular form of its own use-value. Why does
gold take the form of money face to face with the linen? Because the linen’s
price of £2, its denomination in money, has already equated the linen to gold in
its character of money. A commodity strips off its original commodity-form on
being alienated, i.e., on the instant its use-value actually attracts the
gold, that before existed only ideally in its price. The realisation of a
commodity’s price, or of its ideal value-form, is therefore at the same time the
realisation of the ideal use-value of money; the conversion of a commodity into
money, is the simultaneous conversion of money into a commodity. The apparently
single process is in reality a double one. From the pole of the commodity-owner
it is a sale, from the opposite pole of the money-owner, it is a purchase. In
other words, a sale is a purchase, C–M is also M–C.

卖家将他的商品换为金，买家将他的金换为商品。商品与它的一般等价物交换，与它的Value形态交换。金与它的一种使用价值形态交换。麻布的价格200元，使麻布与作为货币的金相等。商品的使用价值将他人的金吸引过来的时刻【事实的说法】，商品就褪去了它原来的商品形式【公式的说法】。商品的价格，即商品在卖家头脑中的Value形式的实现，就是货币在买家头脑中的使用价值的实现。商品转化为货币，同时就是货币转化为商品。这一件事实际上是两件事。从卖家的角度看，这是卖；从买家的角度看，这是买。换句话说，卖的过程也是买的过程，C-M也是M-C。

Up to this point we have considered men in only one economic capacity, that of
owners of commodities, a capacity in which they appropriate the produce of the
labour of others, by alienating that of their own labour. Hence, for one
commodity-owner to meet with another who has money, it is necessary, either,
that the product of the labour of the latter person, the buyer, should be in
itself money, should be gold, the material of which money consists, or that his
product should already have changed its skin and have stripped off its original
form of a useful object. In order that it may play the part of money, gold must
of course enter the market at some point or other. This point is to be found at
the source of production of the metal, at which place gold is bartered, as the
immediate product of labour, for some other product of equal value. From that
moment it always represents the realised price of some commodity. Apart from its
exchange for other commodities at the source of its production, gold, in
whose-so-ever hands it may be, is the transformed shape of some commodity
alienated by its owner; it is the product of a sale or of the first
metamorphosis C–M. Gold, as we saw, became ideal money, or a measure of values,
in consequence of all commodities measuring their values by it, and thus
contrasting it ideally with their natural shape as useful objects, and making it
the shape of their value. It became real money, by the general alienation of
commodities, by actually changing places with their natural forms as useful
objects, and thus becoming in reality the embodiment of their values. When they
assume this money-shape, commodities strip off every trace of their natural
use-value, and of the particular kind of labour to which they owe their
creation, in order to transform themselves into the uniform, socially recognised
incarnation of homogeneous human labour. We cannot tell from the mere look of a
piece of money, for what particular commodity it has been exchanged. Under their
money-form all commodities look alike. Hence, money may be dirt, although dirt
is not money. We will assume that the two gold pieces, in consideration of which
our weaver has parted with his linen, are the metamorphosed shape of a quarter
of wheat. The sale of the linen, C–M, is at the same time its purchase, M–C. But
the sale is the first act of a process that ends with a transaction of an
opposite nature, namely, the purchase of a Bible; the purchase of the linen, on
the other hand, ends a movement that began with a transaction of an opposite
nature, namely, with the sale of the wheat. C–M (linen–money), which is the
first phase of C–M–C (linen–money–Bible), is also M–C (money–linen), the last
phase of another movement C–M–C (wheat–money–linen). The first metamorphosis of
one commodity, its transformation from a commodity into money, is therefore also
invariably the second metamorphosis of some other commodity, the
retransformation of the latter from money into a commodity.

至此，我们只考虑了一种人与人的经济关系，即商品所有者之间的关系，他们通过让渡自己的劳动产品来占有别人的劳动产品。因此，一个商品所有者A能遇到一个货币所有者B，要么是因为B的劳动产品本来就是金，要么是因为B的劳动产品已经褪去其原有的使用价值形式，变成金。【B要么是自己挖金子，要么是用自己的商品换来别人的金子。】金要执行货币的职能，自然必须从某处进入市场。这个某处就是金的产地，人们挖出金子来，直接用作货币去买其他产品。从此，金就一直代表着已经实现了的商品价格。【一直代表着已经卖掉的商品价格。】除了在金的产地的交换外，无论金在谁手里，它都是他所让渡的商品的转换形态，是卖的结果，是C-M的结果。所有商品都用金度量自己的Value，因而金是头脑中的货币，人们在头脑中用金与其他商品的肉体比较，使金成为它们Value的形态。【使Value这个灵魂寄宿在金的肉体。】卖家卖掉自己的商品，放弃商品的有用形式，他头脑中的金就成为真实的金，成为寄宿着Value的肉体。当商品取得了货币形态【当他卖掉商品，拿到了货币】，商品就褪去了使用价值的外皮，褪去了具体劳动的线索，成为了社会公认的抽象劳动的化身。我们只看卖家手里的货币，无法得知卖家当初卖掉的是什么商品。所有的商品，变成了货币后，都是一样的。因此，货币可能来自牛粪，虽然货币看不起牛粪。我们假设，张三卖掉一夸特小麦，得到2个金币，他用2个金币买下织麻布者的麻布。织麻布者卖麻布（C-M）同时就是张三买麻布（M-C）。卖是一个人的活动的开始阶段，买是他的结束阶段。卖麻布是织麻布者的开始阶段，同时是张三的结束阶段。一个人的C-M，是另一个人的M-C。C-M是一个人的C-M-C的开始阶段，同时是另一个人的C-M-C的结束阶段。一个商品的开始阶段，同时是另一个商品的结束阶段。