As Marx sets out, Ricardo's comment is true in relation to barter, because A only sells in order to obtain other commodities required for their own consumption, either personal or productive. But, as soon as money intervenes, which occurs very soon after commodity production begins, this is no longer true. The money commodity, as set out earlier, is not like other commodities, produced to be consumed, but exists only so long as it is not consumed, and remains in circulation.
So, contrary to Say's Law, and Ricardo's comment, A may now produce commodity X, and sell it to B for, say, £10, but is under no obligation, now, to spend this £10 for the purchase of Y from B, or indeed, any other commodity from any other seller. As Marx puts it in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 17.
“That only particular commodities, and not all kinds of commodities, can form “a glut in the market” and that therefore over-production can always only be partial, is a poor way out. In the first place, if we consider only the nature of the commodity, there is nothing to prevent all commodities from being superabundant on the market, and therefore all falling below their price. We are here only concerned with the factor of crisis. That is all commodities, apart from money [may be superabundant]. [The proposition] the commodity must be converted into money, only means that: all commodities must do so. And just as the difficulty of undergoing this metamorphosis exists for an individual commodity, so it can exist for all commodities. The general nature of the metamorphosis of commodities—which includes the separation of purchase and sale just as it does their unity—instead of excluding the possibility of a general glut, on the contrary, contains the possibility of a general glut.”
The commodity comprises use-value and exchange-value, but there is nothing, now, necessarily holding these two aspects together. The buyer of a commodity does so because they desire its use value, whereas for the seller it has no use value. They sell it because they desire to realise its value, but, for the buyer, what they are prepared to pay for it has no connection to what it has cost the producer to produce it, i.e. its value.
“The exchange process of commodities is the real relation that exists between them. This is a social process which is carried on by individuals independently of one another, but they take part in it only as commodity-owners; they exist for one another only insofar as their commodities exist; they thus appear to be in fact the conscious representatives of the exchange process.” (p 41)
For the owner of a commodity, it is not a use-value. That is why they sell it. Their interest in it is only to realise its exchange-value. Its only use-value, for them, is that it is a bearer of exchange-value, and, thereby, of obtaining that exchange-value in some other form, as use value or money. The commodity they sell is only a use value for its buyer, who wants it in order to consume that use-value.
“The commodity must, on the other hand, become a use-value for its owner, since his means of existence exist outside it, in the use-values of other people’s commodities. To become a use- value, the commodity must encounter the particular need which it can satisfy. Thus the use-values of commodities become use-values by a mutual exchange of places: they pass from the hands of those for whom they were means of exchange into the hands of those for whom they serve as consumer goods. Only as a result of this universal alienation of commodities does the labour contained in them become useful labour.” (p 42)
Its also for this reason that the producer of commodities, having produced them, must sell them, even if the price they obtain is less than their exchange-value. A self-sufficient peasant producer who considers the labour required to produce a given product, compared to others they wish to consume, may decide not to produce it, and instead to use their labour in some other way. They can always meet their consumption needs by this variation in the way they allocate their available time. When such producers only engage in the exchange of their surplus products, this remains true, but, where they decide to spend all their time producing a small range of commodities, it is not. A weaver can only live if they can buy the food and other necessities they require, and they can only obtain the money to buy these commodities if they sell the cloth they have produced, at whatever price they can get for it at the time.
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