Capitalism's Fatal Flaw, and the Way Forward: The ‘INTRA-DUALITY’ of USE-VALUE. Part 5. Karl Seldon on Karl Marx Series.

Sunday, February 22, 2026

The ‘INTRA-DUALITY’ of USE-VALUE. Part 5. Karl Seldon on Karl Marx Series.

Full Title:

The Historical-

Dialectical

‘INTRA-DUALITY’

USE-VALUE,

and the

ORIGIN

of “the

Exchange-Value”.

Part 5.:

Karl Seldon on

Karl Marx Series.

GLOBAL STRATEGIC HYPOTHESES.

Dear Reader,

It is my pleasure, and my honor, as an elected member of the Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.] General Council, and as a voting member of F.E.D., to share, with you, from time to time, as they are approved for public release by the F.E.D. General Council, Karl Seldon’s commentaries on the world-historic breakthrough work of Karl Marx.

This 5th text in this by now long-running series is posted herewith, together with supporting text-images and diagrams [Some E.D. standard edits have been applied, in the version presented below, by the editors of the F.E.D. Special Council for the Encyclopedia, to the direct transcript of our co-founder’s discourse].

Seldon –

Notes.

(1) Marx touches on the, internal-/inherent-to-the-capitalist-system

use-value productivity vs. ‘[exchange-]value productivity’

dialectic in a Grundrisse footnote: “the productivity of capital, as capital is not the productive force which increases use values; but rather its capacity to create value; the degree to which it produces value.”

As such, the ‘value-productivity of capital’ is directly related to the rate of profit on capital.

[Karl Marx, Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy [“Grundrisse”],translated and edited by Martin Nicolaus, Penguin Books, NY, USA, 1973, p. 630n.].

(2) Evidence indicates that the barter stage of the development of the units-kind known today as commodities, and of the exchange-value in general, began in swappings between ancient social units, not within them. However, there is evidence of an older species of ‘exchange-use-value’ that began within even more ancient social units, known today as the practice of “gifts-giving”. This practice was a risk management strategy. Gifts given to others today did not typically brook an immediate gift, given in return. But such gifts, e.g., given to a family unit who were in circumstances of a temporary shortage of key supplies, earned thereby a ‘favor-credit’, making it likely that the recipient family unit would give back to the givers at a future time, if those givers at that time themselves suffered a temporary supplies shortage.

(3) Regarding the use-value of labor-power commodities for capitalists being their power to increase the exchange-value owned by such capitalists: To produce more value, «mehr-vert», “surplus-value” [Marx], is to produce more exchange-value for such capitalists, if and when the commodities produced by that labor, etc., which “contain” that “surplus-value”, have their total value, including their “surplus-value”, “realized” [Marx] at their [adjusted: “prices of production”] value-price, (c + v + s).

For more information regarding these Seldonian insights, and to read and/or download, free of charge, PDFs and/or JPGs of Foundation books, other texts, and images, please see:

www.dialectics.info

and

https://independent.academia.edu/KarlSeldon

For partially pictographical, ‘poster-ized’ visualizations of many of these Seldonian insights -- specimens of ‘dialectical art’ – as well as dialectically-illustrated books published by the F.E.D. Press, see –