On the first pole is the good which expresses its value, which plays the active role (relative form of value); and on the second pole is the good which is used as a material for the first good value expression, which plays the passive role and is in an equivalent form. Thus, the relative and the equivalent forms are the two poles of the value expression.
The equivalent form of value has Эквивалентная форма стоимости some features:
The use value of the equivalent good serves as a form of the opposite good value expression;
The concrete labor spent on the equivalent good production serves as a form of the opposite abstract labor expression;
The private labor spent on the equivalent good production serves as a form of the opposite social labor expression.
The second stage is a total or expanded form of value.
The labor division with the human productive power development which expended the range of the got goods strongly resulted the requirement in the labor products exchange. Initially it was a simple exchange of one good on another which in small scale is still applied up to now and is known as «barter».
With the pastoralist and agricultural tribes’ development the first big social division of labor: people began to exchange many different social labor items and goods of relative form of value. The substantial fault of this form of value that the value of each good doesn’t get reasonable expression because of a wide range of the equivalent goods exsistance.
The third stage is a general form of value.
With an increase of the exchange operations volume and the range of exchanged goods the natural exchange on the principle of «the good for the good» became more and more problematic, led to the time loses during the searches of companions or to direct damages if perishable goods staled.
It can be assumed that some nebbish sellers at a risk of the goods loss or in despair exchanged them not on needed but on fast-moving in order to exchange it again on required. Thus, the fast-moving goods appeared which played the role of the first «commodity» money. Multiple usage of the fast-moving goods as an intermediary made them common twice. That is why the ratios in which they were exchanged on the other goods became stable. It let us say about the birth of «the equivalent goods» which confirms their role and functions of the commodity money.
Thanks to such money the process of purchase and sale separates in space and time and the commodity money themselves become the payment units which formulate the scale of prices in terms of the money units’ quantity paid for the purchased goods.
This process happens spontaneously beyond the control and desire of the concrete goods producer simultaneously to the market and its divisions’ birth. The predictability of the other subjects’ behavior increases, the indefiniteness decreases and as a result the individual expenses (charges) diminish together with the common.
In case of such local equivalent good elimination a random quotient of the two individual commodity producers who on their own risk and peril determine the cost of the concrete good passes. It’s becoming apparent that the cost of the good is not determined by the exchange but the cost itself (the specific type of labor put in the good production) and its volume determine the exchange relations in which the one good exchanged on the other.
Therefore we can see that the cost exists objectively and has a social character reflecting the social relations between the individual commodity producers. As a result the general form of value appears when one of the goods opposes the others as an equivalent.