An
analogous
correction was made in a copy of the second German edition of the first volume of --Capital?
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
(Ashen.
Deipn.
1.
iv.
49 v.
2.
ed.
Schweighauser, 1802.
)
12 ? Owing to the fact that money, when serving as the standard of price, appears under the same reckoning names as do the prices of commodities, and that therefore the sum of ? 3 17s. 10 1/2d. may signify on the one hand an ounce weight of gold, and on the other, the value of a ton of iron, this reckoning name of money has been called its mint-price. Hence there sprang up the extraordinary notion, that the value of gold is estimated in its own material, and that, in contradistinction to all other commodities, its price is fixed by the State. It was erroneously thought that the giving of reckoning names to definite weights of gold, is the same thing as fixing the value of those weights. ? (Karl Marx, l. c. , p. 52. )
13 See --Theorien von der Masseinheit des Geldes? in --Zur Kritik der Pol Oekon. &c. ,? p. 53, seq. The fantastic notions about raising or lowering the mint-price of money by transferring to greater or smaller weights of gold or silver, the names already legally appropriated to fixed weights of those metals; such notions, at least in those cases in which they aim, not at clumsy financial operations against creditors, both public and private but at economic quack remedies, have been so exhaustively treated by Wm. Petty in his --Quantulumcunque concerning money: To the Lord Marquis of Halifax, 1682,? that even his immediate followers, Sir Dudley North and John Locke, not to mention later ones, could only dilute him. --If the wealth of a nation? he remarks, --could be decupled by a
? ? 92 Chapter 3
proclamation, it were strange that such proclamations have not long since been made by our Governors. ? (l. c. , p. 36. )
14 --Ou bien, il faut consentir a` dire qu'une valeur d'un million en argent vaut plus qu'une valeur e? gale en marchandises. ? [--Or indeed it must be admitted that a million in money is worth more than an equal value in commodities? ] (Le Trosne, l. c. , p. 919), which amounts to saying --qu'une valeur vaut plus qu'une valeur e? gale. ? [--that one value is worth more than another value which is equal to it. ? ]
15 Jerome had to wrestle hard, not only in his youth with the bodily flesh, as is shown by his fight in the desert with the handsome women of his imagination, but also in his old age with the spiritual flesh. --I thought,? he says, --I was in the spirit before the Judge of the Universe. ? --Who art thou? ? asked a voice. --I am a Christian. ? --Thou liest,? thundered back the great Judge, --thou art nought but a Ciceronian. ?
16
--? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? '? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? '? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . ? [--As Heraclitus says, all things are exchanged for fire and fire for all things, as wares are exchanged for gold and gold for wares. ? ] (F. Lassalle: --Die Philosophie Herakleitos des Dunkeln. ? Berlin, 1858, Vol. I, p. 222. ) Lassalle in his note on this passage, p. 224, n. 3. , erroneously makes gold a mere symbol of value.
1\7 Note by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in the Russian edition. -- In his letter of November 28, 1878, to N. F. Danielson (Nikolai-on) Marx proposed that this sentence be corrected to read as follows: --And, as a matter of fact, the value of each single yard is but the materialised form of a part of the social labour expended on the whole number of yards. ?
An analogous correction was made in a copy of the second German edition of the first volume of --Capital? belonging to Marx; however, not in his handwriting.
18 --Toute vente est achat. ? [--Every sale is a purchase. ? ] (Dr. Quesnay: --Dialogues sur le Commerce et les Travaux des Artisans. ? Physiocrates ed. Daire I. Partie, Paris, 1846, p. 170), or as Quesnay in his --Maximes ge? ne? rales? puts it, --Vendre est acheter. ? [--To sell is to buy. ? ]
19 --Le prix d'une marchandise ne pouvant e^tre paye? que par le prix d'une autre marchandise? (Mercier de la Rivie`re: --L'Ordre naturel et essentiel des socie? te? s politiques. ? [--The price of one commodity can only be paid by the price of another commodity? ] Physiocrates, ed. Daire II. Partie, p. 554. )
20 --Pour avoir cet argent, il faut avoir vendu,? [--In order to have this money, one must have made a sale,? ] l. c. , p. 543.
21 As before remarked, the actual producer of gold or silver forms an exception. He exchanges his product directly for another commodity, without having first sold it.
22 --Si l'argent repre? sente, dans nos mains, les choses que nous pouvons de? sirer d'acheter, il y repre? sente aussi les choses que nous avons vendues pour cet argent. ? [--If money represents, in our hands, the things we can wish to buy, it also represents the things we have sold to obtain that money? ] (Mercier de la Rivie`re, l. c. , p. 586. )
23 --Il y a donc . . . quatre termes et trois contractants, dont l'un intervient deux fois? [--There are therefore . . . four terms and three contracting parties, one of whom intervenes twice? ] (Le Trosne, l. c. , p. 909. )
24 Self-evident as this may be, it is nevertheless for the most part unobserved by political economists, and especially by the --Free-trader Vulgaris. ?
25 See my observations on James Mill in --Zur Kritik, &c. ,? pp. 74-76. With regard to this subject, we may notice two methods characteristic of apologetic economy. The first is the identification of the
? ? 93 Chapter 3
circulation of commodities with the direct barter of products, by simple abstraction from their points of difference; the second is, the attempt to explain away the contradictions of capitalist production, by reducing the relations between the persons engaged in that mode of production, to the simple relations arising out of the circulation of commodities. The production and circulation of commodities are however, phenomena that occur to a greater or less extent in modes of production the most diverse. If we are acquainted with nothing but the abstract categories of circulation, which are common to all these modes of production, we cannot possibly know anything of the specific points of difference of those modes, nor pronounce any judgment upon them. In no science is such a big fuss made with commonplace truisms as in Political Economy. For instance, J. B. Say sets himself up as a judge of crises, because, forsooth, he knows that a commodity is a product.
26 Translator's note. -- This word is here used in its original signification of the course or track pursued by money as it changes from hand to hand, a course which essentially differs from circulation.
27 Even when the commodity is sold over and over again, a phenomenon that at present has no existence for us, it falls, when definitely sold for the last time, out of the sphere of circulation into that of consumption, where it serves either as means of subsistence or means of production.
28 --Il (l'argent) n'a d'autre mouvement que celui qui lui est imprime? par les productions. ? [--It? (money) --has no other motion than that imparted to it by the products? ] (Le Trosne, l. c. , p. 885. )
29 --Ce sont les productions qui le (l'argent) mettent en mouvement et le font circuler . . . La ce? le? rite? de son mouvement (c. de l'argent) supple? e a` sa quantite? . Lorsqu'il en est besoin il ne fait que glisser d'une main dans l'autre sans s'arre^ter un instant. ? [--It is products which set it? (money) --in motion and make it circulate . . . The velocity of its? (money's) --motion supplements its quantity. When necessary, it does nothing but slide from hand to hand, without stopping for a moment? ] (Le Trosne, l. c. . pp. 915, 916. )
30 --Money being . . . the common measure of buying and selling, everybody who hath anything to sell, and cannot procure chapmen for it, is presently apt to think, that want of money in the. kingdom, or country, is the cause why his goods do not go off; and so, want of money is the common cry; which is a great mistake. . . What do these people want, who cry out for money? . . . The farmer complains . . . he thinks that were more money in the country; he should have a price for his goods. Then it seems money is not his want, but a price for his corn and cattel, which he would sell, but cannot. . . Why cannot he get a price? . . . (1) Either there is too much corn and cattel in the country, so that most who come to market have need of selling, as he hash, and few of buying; or (2) There wants the usual vent abroad by transportation. . . , or (3) The consumption fails, as when men, by reason of poverty, do not spend so much in their houses as formerly they did; wherefore it is not the increase of specific money, which would at all advance the farmer's goods, but the removal of any of these three causes, which do truly keep down the market. . . The merchant and shopkeeper want money in the same manner, that is, they want a vent for the goods they deal in, by reason that the markets fail? . . . [A nation] --never thrives better, than when riches are tost from hand to hand. ? (Sir Dudley North: --Discourses upon Trade,? Lond. 1691, pp. 11-15, passim. ) Herrenschwand's fanciful notions amount merely to this, that the antagonism, which has its origin in the nature of commodities, and is reproduced in their circulation, can be removed by increasing the circulating medium. But if, on the one hand, it is a popular delusion to ascribe stagnation in production and circulation to insufficiency of the circulating medium, it by no means follows, on the other hand, that an actual paucity of the medium in consequence, e. g. , of bungling legislative interference with the regulation of currency, may not give rise to such stagnation.
31 --There is a certain measure and proportion of money requisite to drive the trade of a nation, more or less than which would prejudice the same. lust as there is a certain proportion of farthings necessary in
? ? 94 Chapter 3
a small retail trade, to change silver money, and to even such reckonings as cannot be adjusted with the smallest silver pieces. . . . Now, as the proportion of the number of farthings requisite in commerce is to be taken from the number of people, the frequency of their exchanges: as also, and principally, from the value of the smallest silver pieces of money; so in like manner, the proportion of money [gold and silver specie] requisite in our trade, is to be likewise taken from the frequency of commutations, and from the bigness of the payments. ? (William Petty, --A Treatise of Taxes and Contributions. ? Lond. 1667, p. 17. ) The Theory of Hume was defended against the attacks of J. Steuart and others, by A. Young, in his --Political Arithmetic,? Lond; 1774, in which work there is a special chapter entitled --Prices depend on quantity of money, at p. 112, sqq. I have stated in --Zur Kritik, &c. ,? p. 149: --He (Adam Smith) passes over without remark the question as to the quantity of coin in circulation, and treats money quite wrongly as a mere commodity. ? This statement applies only in so far as Adam Smith, ex officio, treats of money. Now and then, however, as in his criticism of the earlier systems of Political Economy, he takes the right view. --The quantity of coin in every country is regulated by the value of the commodities which are to be circulated by It. . . . The value of the goods annually bought and sold in any country requires a certain quantity of money to circulate and distribute them to their proper consumers, and can give employment to no more. The channel of circulation necessarily draws to itself a sum sufficient to fill it, and never admits any more. ? (--Wealth of Nations. ? Bk. IV. , ch. 1. ) In like manner, ex officio, he opens his work with an apotheosis on the division of labour. Afterwards, in the last book which treats of the sources of public revenue, he occasionally repeats the denunciations of the division of labour made by his teacher, A. Ferguson.
32 --The prices of things will certainly rise in every nation, as the gold and silver increase amongst the people, and consequently, where the gold and silver decrease in any nation, the prices of all things must fall proportionately to such decrease of money. ? (Jacob Vanderlint: --Money Answers all Things. ? Lond.
12 ? Owing to the fact that money, when serving as the standard of price, appears under the same reckoning names as do the prices of commodities, and that therefore the sum of ? 3 17s. 10 1/2d. may signify on the one hand an ounce weight of gold, and on the other, the value of a ton of iron, this reckoning name of money has been called its mint-price. Hence there sprang up the extraordinary notion, that the value of gold is estimated in its own material, and that, in contradistinction to all other commodities, its price is fixed by the State. It was erroneously thought that the giving of reckoning names to definite weights of gold, is the same thing as fixing the value of those weights. ? (Karl Marx, l. c. , p. 52. )
13 See --Theorien von der Masseinheit des Geldes? in --Zur Kritik der Pol Oekon. &c. ,? p. 53, seq. The fantastic notions about raising or lowering the mint-price of money by transferring to greater or smaller weights of gold or silver, the names already legally appropriated to fixed weights of those metals; such notions, at least in those cases in which they aim, not at clumsy financial operations against creditors, both public and private but at economic quack remedies, have been so exhaustively treated by Wm. Petty in his --Quantulumcunque concerning money: To the Lord Marquis of Halifax, 1682,? that even his immediate followers, Sir Dudley North and John Locke, not to mention later ones, could only dilute him. --If the wealth of a nation? he remarks, --could be decupled by a
? ? 92 Chapter 3
proclamation, it were strange that such proclamations have not long since been made by our Governors. ? (l. c. , p. 36. )
14 --Ou bien, il faut consentir a` dire qu'une valeur d'un million en argent vaut plus qu'une valeur e? gale en marchandises. ? [--Or indeed it must be admitted that a million in money is worth more than an equal value in commodities? ] (Le Trosne, l. c. , p. 919), which amounts to saying --qu'une valeur vaut plus qu'une valeur e? gale. ? [--that one value is worth more than another value which is equal to it. ? ]
15 Jerome had to wrestle hard, not only in his youth with the bodily flesh, as is shown by his fight in the desert with the handsome women of his imagination, but also in his old age with the spiritual flesh. --I thought,? he says, --I was in the spirit before the Judge of the Universe. ? --Who art thou? ? asked a voice. --I am a Christian. ? --Thou liest,? thundered back the great Judge, --thou art nought but a Ciceronian. ?
16
--? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? '? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? '? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . ? [--As Heraclitus says, all things are exchanged for fire and fire for all things, as wares are exchanged for gold and gold for wares. ? ] (F. Lassalle: --Die Philosophie Herakleitos des Dunkeln. ? Berlin, 1858, Vol. I, p. 222. ) Lassalle in his note on this passage, p. 224, n. 3. , erroneously makes gold a mere symbol of value.
1\7 Note by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in the Russian edition. -- In his letter of November 28, 1878, to N. F. Danielson (Nikolai-on) Marx proposed that this sentence be corrected to read as follows: --And, as a matter of fact, the value of each single yard is but the materialised form of a part of the social labour expended on the whole number of yards. ?
An analogous correction was made in a copy of the second German edition of the first volume of --Capital? belonging to Marx; however, not in his handwriting.
18 --Toute vente est achat. ? [--Every sale is a purchase. ? ] (Dr. Quesnay: --Dialogues sur le Commerce et les Travaux des Artisans. ? Physiocrates ed. Daire I. Partie, Paris, 1846, p. 170), or as Quesnay in his --Maximes ge? ne? rales? puts it, --Vendre est acheter. ? [--To sell is to buy. ? ]
19 --Le prix d'une marchandise ne pouvant e^tre paye? que par le prix d'une autre marchandise? (Mercier de la Rivie`re: --L'Ordre naturel et essentiel des socie? te? s politiques. ? [--The price of one commodity can only be paid by the price of another commodity? ] Physiocrates, ed. Daire II. Partie, p. 554. )
20 --Pour avoir cet argent, il faut avoir vendu,? [--In order to have this money, one must have made a sale,? ] l. c. , p. 543.
21 As before remarked, the actual producer of gold or silver forms an exception. He exchanges his product directly for another commodity, without having first sold it.
22 --Si l'argent repre? sente, dans nos mains, les choses que nous pouvons de? sirer d'acheter, il y repre? sente aussi les choses que nous avons vendues pour cet argent. ? [--If money represents, in our hands, the things we can wish to buy, it also represents the things we have sold to obtain that money? ] (Mercier de la Rivie`re, l. c. , p. 586. )
23 --Il y a donc . . . quatre termes et trois contractants, dont l'un intervient deux fois? [--There are therefore . . . four terms and three contracting parties, one of whom intervenes twice? ] (Le Trosne, l. c. , p. 909. )
24 Self-evident as this may be, it is nevertheless for the most part unobserved by political economists, and especially by the --Free-trader Vulgaris. ?
25 See my observations on James Mill in --Zur Kritik, &c. ,? pp. 74-76. With regard to this subject, we may notice two methods characteristic of apologetic economy. The first is the identification of the
? ? 93 Chapter 3
circulation of commodities with the direct barter of products, by simple abstraction from their points of difference; the second is, the attempt to explain away the contradictions of capitalist production, by reducing the relations between the persons engaged in that mode of production, to the simple relations arising out of the circulation of commodities. The production and circulation of commodities are however, phenomena that occur to a greater or less extent in modes of production the most diverse. If we are acquainted with nothing but the abstract categories of circulation, which are common to all these modes of production, we cannot possibly know anything of the specific points of difference of those modes, nor pronounce any judgment upon them. In no science is such a big fuss made with commonplace truisms as in Political Economy. For instance, J. B. Say sets himself up as a judge of crises, because, forsooth, he knows that a commodity is a product.
26 Translator's note. -- This word is here used in its original signification of the course or track pursued by money as it changes from hand to hand, a course which essentially differs from circulation.
27 Even when the commodity is sold over and over again, a phenomenon that at present has no existence for us, it falls, when definitely sold for the last time, out of the sphere of circulation into that of consumption, where it serves either as means of subsistence or means of production.
28 --Il (l'argent) n'a d'autre mouvement que celui qui lui est imprime? par les productions. ? [--It? (money) --has no other motion than that imparted to it by the products? ] (Le Trosne, l. c. , p. 885. )
29 --Ce sont les productions qui le (l'argent) mettent en mouvement et le font circuler . . . La ce? le? rite? de son mouvement (c. de l'argent) supple? e a` sa quantite? . Lorsqu'il en est besoin il ne fait que glisser d'une main dans l'autre sans s'arre^ter un instant. ? [--It is products which set it? (money) --in motion and make it circulate . . . The velocity of its? (money's) --motion supplements its quantity. When necessary, it does nothing but slide from hand to hand, without stopping for a moment? ] (Le Trosne, l. c. . pp. 915, 916. )
30 --Money being . . . the common measure of buying and selling, everybody who hath anything to sell, and cannot procure chapmen for it, is presently apt to think, that want of money in the. kingdom, or country, is the cause why his goods do not go off; and so, want of money is the common cry; which is a great mistake. . . What do these people want, who cry out for money? . . . The farmer complains . . . he thinks that were more money in the country; he should have a price for his goods. Then it seems money is not his want, but a price for his corn and cattel, which he would sell, but cannot. . . Why cannot he get a price? . . . (1) Either there is too much corn and cattel in the country, so that most who come to market have need of selling, as he hash, and few of buying; or (2) There wants the usual vent abroad by transportation. . . , or (3) The consumption fails, as when men, by reason of poverty, do not spend so much in their houses as formerly they did; wherefore it is not the increase of specific money, which would at all advance the farmer's goods, but the removal of any of these three causes, which do truly keep down the market. . . The merchant and shopkeeper want money in the same manner, that is, they want a vent for the goods they deal in, by reason that the markets fail? . . . [A nation] --never thrives better, than when riches are tost from hand to hand. ? (Sir Dudley North: --Discourses upon Trade,? Lond. 1691, pp. 11-15, passim. ) Herrenschwand's fanciful notions amount merely to this, that the antagonism, which has its origin in the nature of commodities, and is reproduced in their circulation, can be removed by increasing the circulating medium. But if, on the one hand, it is a popular delusion to ascribe stagnation in production and circulation to insufficiency of the circulating medium, it by no means follows, on the other hand, that an actual paucity of the medium in consequence, e. g. , of bungling legislative interference with the regulation of currency, may not give rise to such stagnation.
31 --There is a certain measure and proportion of money requisite to drive the trade of a nation, more or less than which would prejudice the same. lust as there is a certain proportion of farthings necessary in
? ? 94 Chapter 3
a small retail trade, to change silver money, and to even such reckonings as cannot be adjusted with the smallest silver pieces. . . . Now, as the proportion of the number of farthings requisite in commerce is to be taken from the number of people, the frequency of their exchanges: as also, and principally, from the value of the smallest silver pieces of money; so in like manner, the proportion of money [gold and silver specie] requisite in our trade, is to be likewise taken from the frequency of commutations, and from the bigness of the payments. ? (William Petty, --A Treatise of Taxes and Contributions. ? Lond. 1667, p. 17. ) The Theory of Hume was defended against the attacks of J. Steuart and others, by A. Young, in his --Political Arithmetic,? Lond; 1774, in which work there is a special chapter entitled --Prices depend on quantity of money, at p. 112, sqq. I have stated in --Zur Kritik, &c. ,? p. 149: --He (Adam Smith) passes over without remark the question as to the quantity of coin in circulation, and treats money quite wrongly as a mere commodity. ? This statement applies only in so far as Adam Smith, ex officio, treats of money. Now and then, however, as in his criticism of the earlier systems of Political Economy, he takes the right view. --The quantity of coin in every country is regulated by the value of the commodities which are to be circulated by It. . . . The value of the goods annually bought and sold in any country requires a certain quantity of money to circulate and distribute them to their proper consumers, and can give employment to no more. The channel of circulation necessarily draws to itself a sum sufficient to fill it, and never admits any more. ? (--Wealth of Nations. ? Bk. IV. , ch. 1. ) In like manner, ex officio, he opens his work with an apotheosis on the division of labour. Afterwards, in the last book which treats of the sources of public revenue, he occasionally repeats the denunciations of the division of labour made by his teacher, A. Ferguson.
32 --The prices of things will certainly rise in every nation, as the gold and silver increase amongst the people, and consequently, where the gold and silver decrease in any nation, the prices of all things must fall proportionately to such decrease of money. ? (Jacob Vanderlint: --Money Answers all Things. ? Lond.
