48 SOCIAL SCIENTIST there is a social division of labour (agriculture and the artisan crafts), but with common ownership of land and other means of production, there is no market and no commodity production and (b) private property in the means of production and labour are required so that products made by people become commodities. Historically, commodity production as such has been a feature of different types of social systems ranging from ancient European slave societies to early modern feudal regimes. Only in the modern era, however, does commodity production become a dominant aspect of the mode of social production. In particular, commodity production acquires its full development in capitalism. In the words of the opening lines of Marx's Capital, ^The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode o f production prevails, presents itself as ^an immense accumulation of commodities.552 Marx adds, ^Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity55.8 Marx starts off with the commodity-form that products made by human beings acquire in modern society. This form at once marks the historical specificity of the mode of production that it prevails in. By analyzing the commodity-form, Marx is able to bring out some of the basic contradictions that characterize well-developed commodity production in the capitalist mode. At the same time,the analysis of the commodity-form leads to the development of Marx^ theory of value, which is fundamental to his subsequent analysis of the political economy of capitalism. It must be noted, however, that the analysis of the commod ity is the most abstract and difficult part of Capital. Once this analysis is understood, subsequent parts of Capital are much less difficult. The present article is an attempt to present Marx^ analysis of the commodity. First comes the two-fold character of a commodity, then the concept of value so widely misunderstood by economists, and finally an exposition of what Marx terms ^commodity fetishism". USE VALUE AND EXCHANGE VALUE Every commodity has two aspects. On the one hand, as an object, it has certain natural properties that make it useful. Thus, a pen has the useful property that one can write with it. Viewed from this aspect—a collection of physical and chemical properties that render it useful— the commodity has a use-value. On the other hand, to the person who has produced the commodity it is not its aspect of use value that is of interest, but rather its value-in-exchange in relation to some other commodity. Thus, in relation to another commodity, a pen has an exchange value. One may say that a commodity is both a use value and an exchange value. A question arises: What determines the exchange value of a pen in relation, for ins tance, to a pair of slippers? We shall not answer it straightaway. Supposing that five pens exchange for a pair of slippers, we get the equation: