The Fundamental Contradiction of Capitalist Society in the First Book of Capital

General Determinations and Consequences

Abstract

The fundamental contradiction of the capital society is, on the one hand, the constitutive contradiction of the commodity category, the contradiction between use value and value. On the other hand, historical (concrete) and abstract time, specific to the society of capital and the result of the contradictory dynamics of the production of value and use value. The commodity brings with it this double factor which, as a real contradiction, implies the displacement of the contradiction itself to its exterior. In such a way that, in the first form in which the exchange value is presented (simple, singular or accidental form of the value), the contradiction is externalized and presented as an external antithesis involving two different commodities. On the one hand, the commodity whose use value must be expressed, appears as a simple use value, this is the commodity that is in the relative form of the value. On the other hand, the commodity in which the use value will be expressed, this is in the equivalent form of the value and operates as a mirror of the value of the first. While there is no real contradiction, what happens is the permanent displacement of the fundamental contradiction by the various forms of exchange value to the form of money, from the form of money to money as capital and, ontologically intensifying the exposure and the categorical set, the various contradictions that are manifested in capitalist accumulation.