Money as a Symbol of Alienation in Capitalist Society

The process is thus simply that the product becomes a commodity, that is, a pure element of exchange. Commodities are converted into exchange value. So that it can be identified as exchange value, it is exchanged for a symbol, which represents it as exchange value properly so called. In this symbolic form it can again be exchanged, under certain conditions, for any other goods. When the product becomes a commodity, and the commodity becomes exchange value, it possesses (ideally at first) a double existence. This ideal dual identity necessarily means that the commodity appears in a dual form when actually exchanged: as a natural product on the one hand, as an exchange value on the other. In other words, its exchange value has a material existence, apart from the product.