Editorial introduction to two fragments on value

Below are two texts by Marx not before translated into Swedish. The first one, with the title »Value» is from the Grundrisse (1857–8), interestingly taken from the very end of these Manuscripts. It consists of a first and, as will be seen, unfinished sketch of how the editions to follow of Marx's great critique of political economy, with some minor revisions in the different editions (of 1859, 1867, and 1872) came to be introduced.¹⁾ Thereof the note at the beginning that this paragraph is to be moved forward. It finally ended up constituting the very first sentence of his presentation. It is to be noted, here, that the Grundrisse first and foremost is to be considered as a laboratory for Marx to develop his critique and not as a systematically dialectical presentation such as Capital. Immediately we recognise the famous first sentence both from Critique and from Capital that bourgeois wealth, at first sight, presents itself in commodity form. In the later presentation it is specified, as is well known, as 'an immense accumulation of commodities', with the singular commodity as its elementary form, as an average exemplar. Marx, thus, introduces his critique with a concrete and simple phenomenon, something apparantly trivial. We follow then how Marx reveals its two properties: being a use value and exchange value, where the former, in political economy, primarily acts as the carrier of the latter–exchange value. Use value thereby fullfill its role as the material basis or fundament on which 'a definite economic relation presents itself'. This circumstance, that manifests 'the modern system of private exchange' itself has emerged historically. What we find here is an early indication that what Marx takes as his practical, acutal ground and point of departure is the modern capitalist mode of production, the modern exchange economy with its bourgeois society. In the later versions of the presentation this is even more obvious, where Marx speaks about those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails.