Commodity, product of labour, intended for exchange through buying and selling. Products of labour began to be manufactured as commodities when the social division of labour appeared, with the presence of independent, isolated producers (various owners of the means of production) in the period of the decay of the primitive communal system and emergence of slave relations. It was, first of all, craftsmen and free peasants who were goods producers. The bulk of the material boons in pre-capitalist formations were not, however, commodities, but were created in subsistence economies as items for direct consumption, bypassing exchange (I). It was under capitalism, when commodity production became universal and dominant, that not only all products of man’s labour became commodities, but also his labour power. Commodity is a historical category. Its socio-economic essence changes depending on the type of the relations of production dominant in society. In simple commodity production, the commodity is the product of the labour of a small-scale commodity producer and is created to satisfy his own requirements. Under capitalism, commodities are produced by wage workers but are appropriated by capitalists. They are manufactured to bring profit and surplus value to the capitalist and make him rich. Under capitalism, the commodity is the simplest cell of capitalist economy, containing the 51 seeds of all the specifics and contradictions of this economy. In the socialist economy, the commodity is the product of directly socialised labour; it is manufactured in a planned way by socialist enterprises for the satisfaction of the social requirements and is channelled into consumption through planned commodity exchange. The commodity possesses two properties: use value and value. Its dual character is conditioned by the duality of the labour embodied in the commodity. Use value is created by concrete labour, value—by abstract labour.