Commodities do not embody value

On the conceptual implications of the misuse of the term 'embodiment' in interpretations of Marx

If you are an English reader of Marx or Marxist literature in general, you have certainly come across some formulations such as: “commodities are embodiments of abstract labor”, “the abstract labor embodied in commodities” or “commodities embody surplus-value that must be realized”, etc.

All these phrases have in common to posit the commodity as “value embodied”. This is a mistake whose origin can partly be traced back to the traditional choice of English translators of Marx’s Capital to render various German terms like ‘Darstellung’ or ‘enthalten’ as “embodiment” and “embodied”. Thing is: ‘Darstellung’ means ‘presentation’ (or ‘exhibition’) and ‘enthalten’ means “contain”.

You are certainly wondering why is this a big deal. After all, the core idea is that the commodity as value is a product of abstract labor, so the translation of these terms as embodiment, as sloppy as it can be, cannot have conceptual implications. In fact, it does. And to understand why, I must expand a bit on Marx’s developments regarding its conceptualization of value. Since I intend to write in details about this question in another article, I will keep it short here. Also, note that this topic is directly related to that of the materiality of abstract labor on which I wrote an article. Reading it would constitute a good complement to the present one.

In the first chapter of Capital, Marx shows that the commodity has a two-fold nature: use-value on one hand and value on the other. This unity that grounds the commodity is contradictory, because the commodity in its immediacy cannot exist both as use-value and value.

In its immediate form of existence, the commodity is a product of a concrete labor whose qualities make it incommensurable. This is its reality as a specific use-value. As value, however, the commodity must be identical and therefore commensurable to any other commodity with which it shares a common substance. This substance is that of undifferentiated abstract labor.

The being as use-value of the commodity is therefore not adequate to its being as value. This inner contradiction leads to the exteriorization of the commodity’s value. How is it exteriorized? By taking the form of a thing distinct from the commodity. This distinct thing is the equivalent with which the commodity is put in a relation of equivalence which primarily consists in a relation of equality.

Within the relation of equivalence, the product is qualitatively equated with the equivalent which functions as the form of existence of its value. Now, the commodity does have a double existence that is adequate to its two-fold nature. The form of value allows to present [darstellen] the inner opposition within the commodity as an external relation between a commodity set in the relative form of value and another commodity set in the equivalent form of value.

If a table is the equivalent of a pencil, the pencil exists as value insofar as it is expressed as a table. If as use-value, the pencil is a pencil, as value however, the pencil becomes an other-than-itself; in this example, the pencil becomes a table.

With its form, value obtains a being-there [Dasein]. Indeed: the body of the table functions as the incarnation [Inkarnation] of the pencil’s value, ie. as its exchange-value. Note that this is the reason why value can exist only as exchange-value. And since exchange-value is price when the equivalent is money, this amounts to say that without the price-form, value is a mere ghost that has no existence.

In Marx’s value theory, the notion of ‘embodiment’ is therefore of a specific conceptual importance because it is related to the necessity of the form of value as it arises from the contradictory unity of the commodity. Arguably, one of Marx’s fundamental points in the section on the form of value of Capital is to show that commodities do not embody value precisely because they can’t.

The value of commodities must be made separate from their own body. To acquire a value-objectivity distinct from their objectivity as specific use-values, they must embrace the form of the equivalent. In this way, the existence as commodity-value of the product of labor is not immediate, but rather mediated by its relation with a distinct thing which counts as the embodiment of its value. As Riccardo Bellofiore argues, this is the meaning of the concept of “absolute value”:

Absolute does not mean ‘non-relative’ but ‘made separate from’ (ab) and ‘detached’ (solvere). As André Doz observes, ‘the word absolutus itself says a relation’. For Marx, the adjective ‘absolute’ refers to the two following entwined circumstances. First, the commodity, beyond being use-value, is ‘value’; but it is value only as long as it materializes as ‘exchange value’ in another commodity. In this way, the value within the commodity is separated (or ‘abstracted’) from the use value of that commodity itself and enters into a relation where money becomes an embodied value, the ‘body of value’ (als verkörperter Werth, als Werthkörper), as Marx writes in Capital I.¹

This is why Marx in Capital usually reserves the term ‘embodiment’ [Verkörperung] to speak of the function of the equivalent-form. To speak of the commodities set in the relative form of value, Marx preferably says that abstract social labor is ‘contained’ [enthalten] in them or that it is ‘presented’/‘exhibited’ [dargestellt] in their value.

Between those terms, the adequate conceptual relationship is, in my opinion, the following: the commodity contains a definite quantity of concrete private labor which presents itself as a quantity of abstract social labor through the expression of the commodity as a definite quantity of money. This point is decisive: abstract labor cannot present itself in the commodity directly, for its objectivity as use-value is not adequate to the objectivity required by abstract labor. The concrete labor contained in the commodity must be expressed as its opposite through the expression of its product as money, which thereby reduces it to its abstract aspect. The presentation of abstract social labor in the commodity’s value therefore requires its embodiment in the form of exchange-value. Ultimately, it is money as the universal equivalent that presents [darstellt], through its own body, the value of commodities in the form of their price.

We can see how this theme of the embodiment is directly related to the nature of money, which for Marx is not only a means of exchange, but primarily the objective alienation of producers’ sociality into a specific thing that socially functions as the individual incarnation of abstract social labor. As such, money is the only immediately social product that necessarily results from the scission between the concrete useful character of labor and its social character.

This scission is reflected in the products of labor: the fact that commodities in their immediacy as specific use-values are not adequate to their value-being expresses the fact that, precisely as specific use-values and hence as products of private labors, their sociality is mediated by their relation with money.

In the perspective of this conceptuality, to say that commodities are “value embodied” amounts to say that they are direct incarnations of abstract social labor, throwing away Marx’s conceptual derivation of the form of value and, in a way, suppressing the necessity of money for the recognition of private labors’ sociality.

It is now easy to see why translating eg. a phrase like “Doppelcharakter der in den Waren dargestellten Arbeit” as “The two-fold character of the labour embodied in commodities” is a mistake which definitely has conceptual implications. And I actually think it might contribute to the development of certain physicalist and in general ‘substantialist’ interpretations which usually do not give the section on the form of value the fair treatment it deserves.

For it is only money which, as the immediate incarnation of abstract social labor, is effectively value embodied.

1. Bellofiore, Riccardo, chapter 5: ‘Absolute value’, in Marx: Key concepts, New Directions in Modern Economics series, 2024, p. 77.