Apparently money is able to act as the universal equivalent because it does not exist in the "ranks" of the commodities in relative form.
Yes and no. Marx acknowledges that the money-commodity he discusses in Capital, gold, is also a normal commodity in that it has use-value and exchange value, but that, insofar as it functions as money, its use-value tends to fall by the wayside and it tends to function separately as money-commodity than as normal gold. IE, it gets separated into standard units, usually issued by a central source, for the pure purpose of serving as a means of measuring and expressing value rather than as, say, material for a dental crown or wire plating.
I thought the whole relative vs equivalent dichotomy was a little weak from the get-go since the value expression x linen = y coal says exactly the same thing about linen as it does coal.
The point of relative v. equivalent forms of value is that a commodity exchange requires two people and each individual only sees the commodity exchange from one side of the exchange. If I possess x linen and I use y coal as the expression of the value of my x linen, I am using the coal to say something about my linen. I express the value of the linen relatively to the value of the coal, whose own value comes into play only to express its equivalence to the linen whose value is under consideration. As commodity exchange develops and spreads, it becomes more and more advantageous to isolate the function of equivalent to a "universal equivalent" which can serve as a universal expression of exchange-values.
Marx seams to believe that the relative form of value, if it says that "a given quantity of the equivalent is directly exchangeable with iron", does not say "the converse, that iron is directly exchangeable with gold".
The full quote in question:
Like the relative form of value in general, price expresses the value of a commodity (for instance a ton of iron) by asserting that a given quantity of the equivalent (for instance an ounce of gold) is directly exchangeable with iron. But it by no means asserts the converse, that iron is directly exchangeable with gold. In order, therefore, that a commodity may in practice operate effectively as exchange- value, it must divest itself of its natural physical body and become transformed from merely imaginary into real gold. ... Though a commodity may, alongside its real shape (iron, for instance), possess an ideal value-shape or an imagined gold-shape in the form of its price, it cannot simultaneously be both real iron and real gold. To establish its price it is sufficient for it to be equated with gold in the imagination. But to enable it to render its owner the service of a universal equivalent, it must be actually replaced by gold.
To be precise: Marx here is talking about price, not the relative form of value in general. I believe the point he is driving home is that price is assigned to a commodity by its owner in the hopes that it will be exchanged for that price. But that price is only meaningful as an expression of the commodity's exchange-value if it can help to actually precipitate an exchange.
If they have a use-value and can be exchanged for some exchange-value expressed as price how is it not a commodity? How does it not have value? Just because there's no abstract labor time invested in its production? That seems to me to be an argument that abstract labor time is not the substance of value. Or when he says that uncultivated land is "without value because no human labor is objectified in it". BUT if value is the quantitative measure of exchangeability and uncultivated land can be exchanged in quantities how does it not have value? Again his answer seems to be "well, there's no labor time objectified in it". Again just looks to me then like value is not objectified labor time.
Can you walk me through your logic here? Marx says that labor-time is not invested in the production of, say, some unit of conscience hypothetically for sale on the market, therefore it is not a commodity because it does not have value (ie it has no SNLT and no labor is expended to produce it, a price-tag is just hung over an abstract concept). I don't understand how this ought to be read to imply its exact opposite, which is the conclusion you draw. Marx argues that uncultivated land does not have value because it is not cultivated -- because it is not a product of human labor (except maybe the labor needed to draw up the deed to turn it into a parcel which can be treated like a commodity). I don't understand how you read this to say its exact opposite.
It is, further, meaningless to ask "if [for Marx] value is the quantitative measure of exchangeability and uncultivated land can be exchanged in quantities how does it [make sense for Marx to say it doesn't] have value?" because this is exactly what Marx has not been saying. Marx has quite explicitly been saying exactly the opposite. Marx's whole point in that section is that while under capitalism price is used to express/approximate values, prices are not values and there is no necessary relation between a commodity's price and value, cf:
The magnitude of the value of a commodity therefore expresses a necessary relation to social labour-time which is inherent in the process by which its value is created. With the transformation of the magnitude of value into the price this necessary relation appears as the exchange-ratio between a single commodity and the money commodity which exists outside it. This relation, however, may express both the magnitude of value of the commodity and the greater or lesser quantity of money for which it can be sold under the given circumstances. The possibility, therefore, of a quantitative incongruity between price and magnitude. of value, i.e. the possibility that the price may diverge from the magnitude of value, is inherent in the price-form itself. This is not a defect, but, on the contrary, it makes this form the adequate one for a mode of production whose laws can only assert themselves as blindly operating averages between constant irregularities.