2.1 All commodities are the products of labor as a human activity.
1. A commodity only exists when it is offered for sale.
However, even when the item for sale was the result of transfer, the act of selling it still requires effort (expenditure of energy). Therefore, every commodity is the product of expended human energy, if only for the service of its sale.
2. Every commodity is the product of human labor.
But it must then be pointed out that, in such a statement, the word "labor" is used in one of its three main meanings. "Labor" means:
- either an expenditure of energy;
- or the product of such an expenditure;
- or an employment.
Figure 4 - Labor expenditure of energy vs product of labor
3. The greatest source of conceptual confusion lies in conflating labor as a human activity (the expenditure of human energy) with the product of that activity.
- The worker's activity: the expenditure of human energy, including his fatigue, his wear and tear.
- The product of this activity: the outcome of work performed.
4. Status of automated labor
Automation does not change anything. All commodities will remain the product of a human activity, even in the case of automatons assembled, programmed and repaired by other automatons. At the top of a line of robots and automated processes will, in fact, always be at least one product resulting from an expenditure of human energy.
Under these conditions, what is the price of a wage? Fatigue and wear and tear, or the labor? What does the employer buy from the employee (and the enterprise in its own name from its owner in his capacity as an employee)?
5. Not every product of human labor —every piece of work— is, for that reason alone, a commodity.
Myriads of products created by human energy are never commodities. Many of these, as we will later discuss, act as factors of production—both for commodities sold by enterprises and for non-commercial services, whether public or private.
6. Rampant commodification has an antidote.
The antidote is a rigorous ontology of commodities, one that provides a complete partition of all kinds of commodity based on their formal definitions.