Forms of Chinese Commodities

Commodities have served as a fundamental economic form throughout history, yet their existence always presupposes specific social relations. In this chapter I examine commodities as historical forms and argue that, in a society where different stages coexist, the decisive question is not how many commodities circulate, but which commodity form is dominant. For China today, the problem is no longer whether a commodity economy exists, but whether the dominant commodity is produced under pre-capitalist small-scale production or under capitalist relations. I therefore distinguish “selling in order to buy” from “buying in order to sell,” and clarify why small-scale commodity production is often mistaken for capitalist commodity production in a transitional society. I then classify Chinese commodities—industrial and agricultural products, and the special commodities of land and labor power—and show that exchange alone does not prove capitalism: the capitalist character of a commodity is determined by the conditions of production and the class relation between owners of the means of production and direct producers.