Earlier, when value was trea­ted sim­ply as labor and was not given dis­tinct social cha­rac­te­ris­tics, value was equa­ted with labor on one hand, and was sepa­ra­ted from exchange value by an abyss on the other hand. In the concept of value eco­no­mists fre­quent­ly dupli­ca­ted the same labor. From this concept of value they could not move to the concept of exchange value. Now when we consi­der value in terms of content and form, we relate value with the concept which pre­cedes it, abs­tract labor (and in the last ana­ly­sis with the mate­rial pro­cess of pro­duc­tion), the content. On the other hand, through the form of value we have alrea­dy connec­ted value with the concept which fol­lows it, exchange value. In fact, once we have deter­mi­ned that value does not represent labor in gene­ral, but labor which has the « form of exchan­gea­bi­li­ty » of a pro­duct, then we must pass from value direct­ly to exchange value. In this way, the concept of value is seen to be inse­pa­rable from the concept of labor on one hand, and from the concept of exchange value on the other.