" What equivalence affirms, Marx shows, is an
identical essence. The expression of value, transforming diverse products of labor into identical
sublimates, is a language of alchemy, of essence and quintessence, of distillation and sublimation. This difference between use-value and exchange-value, then, exposes all the oppositions between body and soul, as Marx's frequent metaphors in this register demonstrate. Use-value is the physical, incarnated, perceptible aspect of the commodity, while the exchange-value is a supernatural abstraction, invisible and supersensible. No biologist's scalpel has ever found a person's soul or anima, just as 'hitherto, no chemist has been able to discover exchange-value in a pearl or diamond' (Marx, Capital 58) "
Jean-Joseph Goux Symbolic Economies (1990) p.19
