2.14 Every composite commodity is produced by means of the purchase of several other commodities, one of which is usually the labor supplied by at least one individual.

Using the terminological conventions laid down above, we can just as easily say: every composite commodity is produced by means of the purchase of several commodities, one of which is generally the primary commodity, always exchanged in exchange for wages.⁶⁶

This observation is, of course, to be compared with the already made and more general observation that commodities are exchanged for commodities.

1. Contributions in kind and in industry to a commercial company, new or already constituted, are the creation of commodities.

This commodity⁶⁷, exchanged for a fraction of the ownership and earnings of the enterprise, enters into (participates in) the composition of the commodity sold by the enterprise.

2. Example of civil servants

Françoise and François sell a portion of the harvest from a garden they cultivate. In doing so, they create composite commodities and, whether they recognize it or not, an enterprise that will endure as long as they continue to sell that share of their product of labor. The additional income this generates is a creation of economic exchange value. The part of the harvest they consume or give away does not enter the circuit of economic exchanges. In an Objective Political Economy, it need not be included in an economic aggregate; in a sprawling economy, by contrast, it finds its place alongside monetary evaluations of the same kind.

3. This poses a fundamental political and ethical problem.

Do we want to push the economy to become as defined or as sprawling as it is possible to make it?

Notes

66. This proposition echoes the title of Sraffa’s book, Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities (1960). Both conceptions are circular: commodities are produced by means of commodities, in contrast with what Sraffa calls the “one-way avenue that leads from ‘Factors of production’ to ‘Consumption goods’” of modern theory (Appendix D). The two conceptions place the circularity at different levels. In Sraffa, it is a technical interdependence between industries, recorded in physical quantities of means of production used up. In the Objective Political Economy, it runs through purchases, that is through economic exchanges recorded in the accounts of enterprises, and it includes the two elementary commodities: the primary commodity and placements (Proposition 2.13). Fabra locates the weak point of Sraffa’s analysis exactly there: it does not show how price and profit interrelate with exchange (P. Fabra, Capital for Profit, Rowman & Littlefield, 1991, p. 335). See the appendix Objective Political Economy and Sraffa. ↩
67. Apports en nature : biens corporels (terrain, immeuble, machine, etc.) et incorporels (brevet, créances, clientèle, etc.). Apports en industrie : ceux d’une activité professionnelle que l’apporteur a déjà exercée. ↩