“[B]y equating their different products to each other as values, they equate their different kinds of labor as human labor. They do this without being aware of it. Value, therefore, does not have its description branded on its forehead; it rather transforms every product of labor into a social hieroglyphic. [ … . ] When, therefore, Galiani says: ‘value is a relation between persons, … he ought to have added: a relation concealed beneath a material shell.’ The determination of the magnitude of value by labor-time is … a secret hidden under the apparent movements of the relative values of the commodities. Its discovery destroys the semblance of the merely accidental determination of the magnitude of the value of the products of labor, but by no means abolishes that determination’s material form.”
Marx qtd. in Sohn-Rethel
STEVEN WEXLER 