Karl Marx

A society that is characterized predominantly by production directly for use is a bit different than a society characterized predominantly by production for exchange. In a society where production is directly for the use of the product, a good or commodity is only worth whatever its use-value is. This means that a product’s worth is based solely on its use to the person using it. A good example of this system would be feudalism in which a serf would be able to produce enough for his own needs and then sell the surplus product in order to buy other useful products that he himself cannot produce. In a society that uses production for exchange a product is only worth whatever it’s exchange-value is. Exchange-value is based on the labor time "socially necessary" for the production of the particular commodity, and is the main measure that determines rates of exchange and thus the logic of commodity production. Capitalism is the main example of this type of social production, a capitalist will use “capital” to invest in goods or commodities in order to gain a profit by exploiting laborers.

In a society characterized by simple commodity production there are many differences from a society characterized by capitalistic productio

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If you consider the case of your average bread-maker, the difference in the two societies becomes easier to see. In terms of whether or not our society’s production is exploitive or not Marx would say that it is exploitive.

The difference between exploitive and non-exploitive production is directly related to whether or not a given society is capitalist. For the most part, the reason that people produce commodities in our society is solely to make as much profit by exchanging these commodities for much more than these commodities actual use-value. Therefore, the profits that a capitalist makes are simply a product of the surplus value that is taken from the workers. He probably will be a wage laborer and will be just another investment on the part of the capitalist. The people who control the means of production often exploit the laborer. On the other hand, in a capitalist society, a bread-maker will not control his means of production. In exploitive production a group of wage laborers are exploited out of his or her full wage for the work done by whomever controls the means of production (tools, factories, workers, etc. Also since we are certainly not predominantly based on simple commodity production because we do indeed rely on wage labor for production.

. In capitalist production the means of production are controlled by the upper class, thus creating a divide between the working class and the upper class. Non-exploitive production could also be construed as a society in which a simple commodity production scheme is used.

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