Commodity Books

“Exchange is thus accessible to analysis because it not only satisfies
individual needs, but is also a social necessity which makes individual
need its instrument while at the same time limiting its satisfaction.
For a need can be satisfied only to the extent that social necessity
will permit. It is of course a presupposition, for human society is
inconceivable without the satisfaction of individual needs. This does
not mean, however, that exchange is simply a function of individual
need, as indeed it would be in a collectivist economy, but that
individual needs are satisfied only to the extent that exchange allows
them to participate in the product of society. It is this participation
which determines exchange. The latter appears to be simply a
quantitative ratio between two things,[4] <#n4> which is determined when
this quantity is determined. The quantity which is turned over in
exchange, however, counts only as a part of social production, which
itself is quantitatively determined by the labour time that society
assigns to it. Society is here conceived as an entity which employs its
collective labour power to produce the total output, while the
individual and his labour power count only as organs of that society. In
that role, the individual shares in the product to the extent that his
own labour power participates, on average, in the total labour power
(assuming the intensity and productivity of labour to be fixed). If he
works too slowly or if his work produces something useless (an otherwise
useful article would be considered useless if it constituted an excess
of goods in circulation), his labour power is scaled down to average
labour time, i.e. socially necessary labour time. The aggregate labour
time for the total product, once given, must therefore find expression
in exchange. In its simplest form, this happens when the quantitative
ratios between goods exchanged correspond to the quantitative ratios of
the socially necessary labour time expended in their production.
Commodities would in that case exchange at their values.”
― Rudolph Hiferding, Finance Capital: A study in the latest phase of capitalist development