notes30

For any product or simply any thing to become a commodity, a

condition of stable social relations is not essential as, for example,
with so-called ‘chance’ transactions. Often social relations are
here established for the first time (overseas merchants on rare
expeditions, rare colonial commodities, ‘Raubhandel’, etc.)
• In these cases, however, commodity cannot be a universal
form. There is no commodity production here nor a
commodity economy as a form of social structure ; there does
not even need to be a unified society (e.g. early colonial
exchange). Commodity can be a universal category, only in so
far as there is a constant and not a chance social relationship
on the anarchic basis of production. Consequently, as the
irrationality of the production process disappears, i.e. as a
conscious social control mechanism is introduced, in the
place of the anarchic element, so commodity is transformed
into product and loses its commodity character.