Why should you keep notes?
==========================

I like keeping my notes in RST files because notes are what
make up for my really awful memory, and RST is lovely.

Overview
--------

* Requires some other feature.
* Requires something else, too.

  * Maybe another thing, too?
  * And, of course, mandarin oranges.

.. code-block:: python   

    def access_main_security_grid(self):
        print("access: PERMISSION DENIED....and....")
        while(True):
            print("YOU DIDN'T SAY THE MAGIC WORD!")

Another Section
---------------

The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production
prevails, presents itself as "an immense accumulation of commodities,"
[1] its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore
begin with the analysis of a commodity.

A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing
that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another.
The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the
stomach or from fancy, makes no difference. [2] Neither are we here
concerned to know how the object satisfies these wants, whether directly
as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of production.

Every useful thing, as iron, paper, etc., may be looked at from the two
points of view of quality and quantity. It is an assemblage of many
properties, and may therefore be of use in various ways. To discover
the various uses of things is the work of history. [3] So also is the
establishment of socially-recognized standards of measure for the
quantities of these useful objects. The diversity of these measures has
its origin partly in the diverse nature of the objects to be measured,
partly in convention.

The utility of a thing makes it a use-value. [4] But this utility is
not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical properties of the
commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity. A commodity,
such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a
material thing, a use-value, something useful. This property of a
commodity is independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate
its useful qualities. When treating of use-value, we always assume to
be dealing with definite quantities, such as dozens of watches, yards
of linen, or tons of iron. The use-values of commodities furnish the
material for a special study, that of the commercial knowledge of
commodities. [5] Use-values become a reality only by use or consumption:
they also constitute the substance of all wealth, whatever may be
the social form of that wealth. In the form of society we are about
to consider, they are, in addition, the material depositories of
exchange-value.

Exchange-value, at first sight, presents itself as a quantitative
relation, as the proportion in which values in use of one sort are
exchanged for those of another sort, [6] a relation constantly changing
with time and place. Hence exchange-value appears to be something
accidental and purely relative, and consequently an intrinsic value,
i.e., an exchange-value that is inseparably connected with, inherent in
commodities, seems a contradiction in terms. [7] Let us consider the
matter a little more closely.

A given commodity, e.g., a quarter of wheat is exchanged for x
blacking, y silk, or z gold, &c. — in short, for other commodities in
the most different proportions. Instead of one exchange-value, the
wheat has, therefore, a great many. But since x blacking, y silk,
or z gold &c., each represents the exchange-value of one quarter of
wheat, x blacking, y silk, z gold, &c., must, as exchange-values, be
replaceable by each other, or equal to each other. Therefore, first:
the valid exchange-values of a given commodity express something equal;
secondly, exchange-value, generally, is only the mode of expression, the
phenomenal form, of something contained in it, yet distinguishable from
it.

Let us take two commodities, e.g., corn and iron. The proportions in
which they are exchangeable, whatever those proportions may be, can
always be represented by an equation in which a given quantity of corn
is equated to some quantity of iron: e.g., 1 quarter corn = x cwt. iron.
What does this equation tell us? It tells us that in two different
things — in 1 quarter of corn and x cwt. of iron, there exists in equal
quantities something common to both. The two things must therefore be
equal to a third, which in itself is neither the one nor the other. Each
of them, so far as it is exchange-value, must therefore be reducible to
this third.

A simple geometrical illustration will make this clear. In order to
calculate and compare the areas of rectilinear figures, we decompose
them into triangles. But the area of the triangle itself is expressed
by something totally different from its visible figure, namely, by half
the product of the base multiplied by the altitude. In the same way the
exchange-values of commodities must be capable of being expressed in
terms of something common to them all, of which thing they represent a
greater or less quantity.

This common "something" cannot be either a geometrical, a chemical,
or any other natural property of commodities. Such properties claim
our attention only in so far as they affect the utility of those
commodities, make them use-values. But the exchange of commodities is
evidently an act characterised by a total abstraction from use-value.
Then one use-value is just as good as another, provided only it be
present in sufficient quantity. Or, as old Barbon says, "one sort of
wares are as good as another, if the values be equal. There is no
difference or distinction in things of equal value.... An hundred
pounds' worth of lead or iron, is of as great value as one hundred
pounds' worth of silver or gold." [8] As use-values, commodities are,
above all, of different qualities, but as exchange-values they are
merely different quantities, and consequently do not contain an atom of
use-value.

If then we leave out of consideration the use-value of commodities, they
have only one common property left, that of being products of labour.
But even the product of labour itself has undergone a change in our
hands. If we make abstraction from its use-value, we make abstraction
at the same time from the material elements and shapes that make the
product a use-value; we see in it no longer a table, a house, yarn,
or any other useful thing. Its existence as a material thing is put
out of sight. Neither can it any longer be regarded as the product
of the labour of the joiner, the mason, the spinner, or of any other
definite kind of productive labour. Along with the useful qualities of
the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character
of the various kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete forms
of that labour; there is nothing left but what is common to them all;
all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the
abstract.

Let us now consider the residue of each of these products; it consists
of the same unsubstantial reality in each, a mere congelation of
homogeneous human labour, of labour-power expended without regard to
the mode of its expenditure. All that these things now tell us is, that
human labour-power has been expended in their production, that human
labour is embodied in them. When looked at as crystals of this social
substance, common to them all, they are — Values.

We have seen that when commodities are exchanged, their exchange-value
manifests itself as something totally independent of their use-value.
But if we abstract from their use-value, there remains their Value as
defined above. Therefore, the common substance that manifests itself in
the exchange-value of commodities, whenever they are exchanged, is their
value. The progress of our investigation will show that exchange-value
is the only form in which the value of commodities can manifest itself
or be expressed. For the present, however, we have to consider the
nature of value independently of this, its form.

A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human
labour in the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it. How,
then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured? Plainly, by the
quantity of the value-creating substance, the labour, contained in the
article. The quantity of labour, however, is measured by its duration,
and labour-time in its turn finds its standard in weeks, days, and
hours.