Commodity

A product of labor which satisfies some human want, and produced for sale on the market. Every commodity possesses value and use-value. “Nothing can have value without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labor contained in it; the labor does not count as labor, and therefore creates no value” (Marx). The dominant feature of capitalist society is the production of goods as commodities. “The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities, its unit being a single commodity” (Marx). “In the value form of the product (i.e., commodity), as in a folded bud lies the whole form of capitalist production, the antagonism between capital and wage-labor, the industrial reserve army and crises” (Engels).