Each product, as a product, is both a use value and a value. For Robinson Crusoe, or any direct producer, they are primarily concerned with use value. They want to produce what, for them, provides the greatest utility. But, as Marx sets out in his letter to Kugelmann, where he describes The Law of Value, no direct producer, and no society is free to simply produce those things which, for them, represent the greatest utility.
This is made
clear in Marx's letter to Kugelmann, where he writes,
“As for the Zentralblatt, the man is making the greatest possible concession in admitting, that, if one means anything at all by value, the conclusions I draw must be accepted. The unfortunate fellow does not see that, even if there were no chapter on "value" in my book, the analysis of the real relationships which I give, would contain the proof and demonstration of the real value relation. The nonsense about the necessity of proving the concept of value arises from complete ignorance both of the subject dealt with and of the method of science. Every child knows that any nation that stopped working, not for a year, but let us say, just for a few weeks, would perish. And every child knows, too, that the amounts of products corresponding to the differing amounts of needs demand differing and quantitatively determined amounts of society’s aggregate labour. It is self-evident that this necessity of the distribution of social labour in specific proportions is certainly not abolished by the specific form of social production; it can only change its form of manifestation. Natural laws cannot be abolished at all. The only thing that can change, under historically differing conditions, is the form in which those laws assert themselves. And the form in which this proportional distribution of labour asserts itself in a state of society in which the interconnection of social labour expresses itself as the private exchange of the individual products of labour, is precisely the exchange value of these products.”
“As for the Zentralblatt, the man is making the greatest possible concession in admitting, that, if one means anything at all by value, the conclusions I draw must be accepted. The unfortunate fellow does not see that, even if there were no chapter on "value" in my book, the analysis of the real relationships which I give, would contain the proof and demonstration of the real value relation. The nonsense about the necessity of proving the concept of value arises from complete ignorance both of the subject dealt with and of the method of science. Every child knows that any nation that stopped working, not for a year, but let us say, just for a few weeks, would perish. And every child knows, too, that the amounts of products corresponding to the differing amounts of needs demand differing and quantitatively determined amounts of society’s aggregate labour. It is self-evident that this necessity of the distribution of social labour in specific proportions is certainly not abolished by the specific form of social production; it can only change its form of manifestation. Natural laws cannot be abolished at all. The only thing that can change, under historically differing conditions, is the form in which those laws assert themselves. And the form in which this proportional distribution of labour asserts itself in a state of society in which the interconnection of social labour expresses itself as the private exchange of the individual products of labour, is precisely the exchange value of these products.”
(Marx Letters To Kugelman, Letter of 11th July 1868)
Every society, just as with Robinson, can only do that within the constraint imposed on them by The Law of Value, i.e. by the fact that they have limited labour-time in which to produce these use values. As set out above, a direct producer may have only the labour-time to produce either 100 kg. of potatoes or 200 kg. of carrots, or some proportional amount of both.
Moreover, other constraints apply. If the producer requires 2,000 calories to reproduce their labour-power, and 100 kg. of potatoes contains 1,000 calories, whereas 200 kg. of carrots contains 2,000 calories, they will be constrained to produce carrots, in order to survive, however much they might have preferred to produce potatoes.
A product, as a commodity, also contains use value and value, but the value now takes the form of an exchange-value. It is produced not for its use value, but for its capacity to act as exchange value, to be able to command a quantity of social labour-time, equal to that required for its own reproduction, and thereby, to be able to be exchanged for other commodities of equal value. In this sense, as Marx set out previously, every commodity is money, it is a representative of a quantity of social labour-time, and can, thereby, be exchanged for other commodities of equal value. The value of a product takes the form of individual value. For Robinson, he constitutes society, and his individual labour is itself equal to social labour. For any individual producer of products for direct consumption, the value is always individual value, equal to the labour they expend on that production. For communal production, the individual value is the average value of all those engaged in that particular type of labour, who thereby become a collective labourer. Before a product becomes a commodity, the individual value of these products, must first become a social or market value, as different individual producers, or groups of producers, of each product, compete in the marketplace. It is then, this market value of each commodity that is compared to that of other commodities, to establish an exchange-value, and against money to establish a price.
“And it is this development of the labour embodied in them as social labour, it is the development of their value, which determines the formation of money, the necessity for commodities to represent themselves in respect of one another as money—which means merely as independent forms of existence of exchange-value—and they can only do this by setting apart one commodity from the mass of commodities, and all of them measuring their values in the use-value of this excluded commodity, thereby directly transforming the labour embodied in this exclusive commodity into general, social labour.” (p 145)
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