74 SOCIAL SCIENTIST being. It attaches itself first to this and then to that commodity. But with the growth of exchange, it becomes fixed to a particular kind of commodity thus assuming the money form. The money commodity in this way acquires a formal use-value, originating in its special social function; the point being that one C now has its use-value determined to be only its exchangeability. The use-value of the commodity, labour-power, also acquires a social specification as the analysis of Volume 1 proceeds. In chapter VI labour-power is introduced as that commodity which has the use-value of creating value (VI, 164). It is, then, the use-value for capital. Only in examining its consumption does labour appear natural. The labour process, resolved into its simple elementary factors, Marx says, is human action aimed at producing use-values, appropriation of natural substances to human requirements. Speaking of the source of material wealth, of use-values, he quotes Petty as saying that labour is its father and the earth the mother. This labour process is the everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence, and therefore is common to every social phase of that existence. But this simple process does not tell you what are the social conditions under which it is taking place, whether the slave owners whiplash, or the eagle eye of the capitalist. Under the capitalist mode of production, the capitalist owns the means of production; the labourer, on the other hand, owns nothing except his capacity to labour, or labour-power. The owner of money pays the labourer the value of a day's labour power; as a result the use-value of labour-power for that day belongs to the capitalist. The seller of labour-power, by giving his labour, does no more, in reality, than part with the use-value he has sold. The labour process, the process by wh'ich the capitalist consumes labour power, shows two characteristic phenomena. First, the labourer works under the control of the capitalist to whom his labour belongs. Secondly, the product is the property of the capitalist and not that of the labourer, its immediate producer. All this is a far cry from the earlier characterisation of the consumption of the use value of labour power as a simple labour process, having no social content. (a) We can now proceed to explain the role played by the social specifications of use-values (as derived above) in the analysis of money, commodities and their circulation. In so far as exchange is a process, by which commodities are transferred from persons to whom they are non-use-values, to persons to whom they become use-values, it is a social circulation of matter. The simple circulation of commodities, as exemplified in the circuit C-M-C, shows how the owner of one use-value (corn) sells it in order to buy a use-value (coat) which serves to satisfy his needs. (Here for C, its price can be realised only if it actually has a use-value.) Instead of his original commodity, he now possesses another of the same value but of different utility. And the