NOTE 73 Marx does define the use-value initially as almost a natural substance, but is such a formulation valid? There seems to be a prior determination of a la Hegel, in which the use-value is determined socially through (1) a social determination of need, and (2) as a C— whether in the C-M-C or the M-C-M' circuits—the use-value is only useful for others, yet it is the property of one for whom it is not useful. Quite early in the analysis of Capital, the social specifications of use-value emerge, whether it be the use-value of (1) commodities (2) money-commodity or (3) the commodity labour-power. The social specifications of the use-value of commodities emerges, for instance, in Marx's discussion of commodity fetishism. As a principle, he says, articles of utility become commodities, only because they are products of the labour of private individuals who work independently of each other. The sum total of all these private individuals forms the aggregate labour of society. Since the producers do not come into social contact with one another until they exchange their products, the specific social character of each producer's labour does not appear explicitly until the act of exchange takes place. This act of exchange establishes relations directly between the producers. To the producers, therefore, the relations connecting the labour of one producer with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what as they really are, 'the material relations between persons and social relations between things' (i, 76). It is only by being exchanged that the products of labour acquire, as Values, one common social character, separate from their varied forms of existence as use-values. This division of a product into a use-value and a value becomes practically important only when exchange has become so widespread, that use-values are produced for the object of being exchanged. In this way, the character that the producer's own labour possesses of being socially useful takes the form of the condition, that the product must not only be useful, but useful for others. But there is an element of ambiguity here: is this a social determination of the use-value or of exchange-value? (as undoubtedly exchangeable only as use-values they are such for others). The social specification of the use-value of the money-commodity, however, becomes explicit soon after its introduction in the analysis of Volume 1 (i. 75). As we have seen above, with the increasing number and variety of the commodity exchanged, necessity for a commodity to acquire a value form independent of its use-value grows. Commodity owners never exchange their commodities on a large scale without these different kinds of commodities being equated to one and the same special article. This article acquires the character of general social equivalent. At first, the use-value as an elementary equivalent expresses the value of the C in the relative form. Its useful form then stands as exchange-value. Its character as a general social equivalent comes and goes with the momentary social acts that called it into