Exchange-Value

Exchange-value is the value a commodity has in trade. It's the quantitative measurement of trading value. It's not exactly the same thing as price, but the concepts are pretty close, so much so that if you read exchange-value as price for these chapters, you'll come out okay. Marx doesn't get into price in our chapters, really, which is why we're steering clear of it.

Let's look at it this way. If my Sandy Koufax baseball card can be exchanged for two Nolan Ryan baseball cards, you could say the exchange-value of the Koufax card is two Ryan cards.

Here's our author on the topic of exchange-value: "Exchange-value appears first of all as the quantitative relation, the proportion, in which use-values of one kind exchange for use-values of another kind. This relation changes constantly with time and place" (1.1.5).