This is good but I literally cannot understand what he is talking about when he starts on value. This paragraph for instance:
In capitalism the product is not an object socially mediated by overt forms of social relations and domination. The commodity, as the objectification of both dimensions of labor in capitalism, is its own social mediation. It thus possesses a “double character”: use-value and value. As object, the commodity both expresses and veils social relations which have no other, “independent” mode of expression. This mode of objectification of social relations is their alienation.
I mean, I can make a sort of sense of it but ....
Yep. I mean the basics are that use-value and exchange-value are two different things.
So a chair has a use-value in that you can sit on it, or that it looks nice in your room. Its use-value is dependent on its function and aesthetics. Has it got a wobbly leg, is it comfortable to sit on.
But a chair also has an exchange-value. You could exchange it for, say, a bookcase, or 8 bottles of wine. So it can be a commodity.
There can be a contradiction there. Like with records. If you enjoy them and play them a lot you will devalue them as commodities. And if you spend all your time thinking about them as commodities you might not enjoy them as much (or not in the way they were intended to be enjoyed by the artist).
That leads you onto what a commodity is, how value is created and that capitalism is the triumph of exchange value over use value. And what this does to people.
Personally I don't really get what Postone and the value-form lot are on about 100% either, but the above is explained reasonably well in the first few chapters of Capital.