Both, the natural attributes of things and the individual uses to which they are being put, have existed long before the capitalist system of production without giving wealth those properties of the capitalist-produced wealth which we have noted above. These qualities are the qualities of the good, and these uses are the uses to which the good is being put. They are not the qualities nor the uses of the commodity. They do not, therefore, an any way affect the exchange-value of the thing, that attribute which makes out of the simple good the mysterious commodity with all its peculiar faculties and attributes. Except that the good is the substratum, the material substance, of the commodity; and use-value is the substratum, the material substance, of exchange-value. Historically, therefore, the good preceded the commodity, and use-value preceded exchange-value.
Marx says, therefore: "Whatever the social form of wealth may be, use-values always have a substance of their own, independent of that form. One can not tell by the taste of wheat whether it has been raised by a Russian serf, a French peasant, or an English capitalist. Although the subject of social wants, and, therefore, mutually connected in society, use-values do not bear any marks of the relations of social production. Suppose we have a commodity whose use-value is that of a diamond. We can not tell by looking at the diamond that it is a commodity. When it serves as a use-value, æsthetic or mechanical, on the breast of a harlot or in the hand of a glasscutter, it is a diamond and not a commodity. It is the necessary pre-requisite of a commodity to be a use-value, but it is immaterial to the use-value whether it is a commodity or not. Use-value in this indifference to the nature of its economic destination, i. e. use-value as such, lies outside the sphere of investigation of political economy. . . . But it forms the material basis which directly underlies a definite economic relation which we call exchange-value."
Our wealth, then, in those respects in which it is different from the forms of wealth which preceded it, and which
