1 This is the more necessary, as even the section of Ferdinand Lassalle’s work against Schulze-Delitzsch, in which he professes to give “the intellectual quintessence” of my explanations on these subjects, contains important mistakes. If Ferdinand Lassalle has borrowed almost literally from my writings, and without any acknowledgement, all the general theoretical propositions in his economic works, e.g., those on the historical character of capital, on the connexion between the conditions of production and the mode of production, &c., &c., even to the terminology created by me, this may perhaps be due to purposes of propaganda. I am here, of course, not speaking of his detailed working out and application of these propositions, with which I have nothing to do.

1 Geschichtliche Darstellung des Handels, der Gewerbe und des Ackerbaus, &c.. von Gustav von Gülich. 5 vols., Jena. 1830-45.

2 See my work “Zur Kritik, &c.,” p. 39.

3 The mealy-mouthed babblers of German vulgar economy fell foul of the style of my book. No one can feel the literary shortcomings in “Das Kapital” more strongly than I myself. Yet I will for the benefit and the enjoyment of these gentlemen and their public quote in this connexion one English and one Russian notice. The Saturday Review, always hostile to my views, said in its notice of the first edition: “The presentation of the subject invests the driest economic questions with a certain peculiar charm.” The “St. Petersburg Journal” (Sankt-Peterburgskie Viedomosti), in its issue of April 8 (20), 1872, says: “The presentation of the subject, with the exception of one or two exceptionally special parts, is distinguished by its comprehensibility by the general reader, its clearness, and, in spite of the scientific intricacy of the subject, by an unusual liveliness. In this respect the author in no way resembles ... the majority of German scholars who ... write their books in a language so dry and obscure that the heads of ordinary mortals are cracked by it.”

4 Rezepte – translated as “Receipt,” which in the 19th Century, meant “recipe” and Ben Fowkes, for example translates this as “recipe.” [MIA footnote].

1 “Le Capital,” par Karl Marx. Traduction de M. J. Roy, entierement revisée par l'auteur. Paris. Lachâtre. This translation, especially in the latter part of the book, contains considerable alterations in and additions to the text of the second German edition.

2 At the quarterly meeting of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, held this afternoon, a warm discussion took place on the subject of Free Trade. A resolution was moved to the effect that “having waited in vain 40 years for other nations to follow the Free Trade example of England, this Chamber thinks the time has now arrived to reconsider that position.” The resolution was rejected by a majority of one only, the figures being 21 for, and 22 against. – Evening Standard, Nov. 1, 1886.

[1] In the English edition of 1887 this addition was made by Engels himself. – Ed.

2 In the present edition they are put into square brackets and marked with the initials

3 Marx was not mistaken in the title of the book but in the page. He put down 36 instead of 37. (See pp. 560-61 of the present edition.) – Ed.

1 Karl Marx, “Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie.” Berlin, 1859, p. 3.

2 “Desire implies want, it is the appetite of the mind, and as natural as hunger to the body... The greatest number (of things) have their value from supplying the wants of the mind.” Nicholas Barbon: “A Discourse Concerning Coining the New Money Lighter. In Answer to Mr. Locke’s Considerations, &c.”, London, 1696, pp. 2, 3.

3 “Things have an intrinsick vertue” (this is Barbon’s special term for value in use) “which in all places have the same vertue; as the loadstone to attract iron” (l.c., p. 6). The property which the magnet possesses of attracting iron, became of use only after by means of that property the polarity of the magnet had been discovered.

4 “The natural worth of anything consists in its fitness to supply the necessities, or serve the conveniencies of human life.” (John Locke, “Some Considerations on the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, 1691,” in Works Edit. Lond., 1777, Vol. II., p. 28.) In English writers of the 17th century we frequently find “worth” in the sense of value in use, and “value” in the sense of exchange value. This is quite in accordance with the spirit of a language that likes to use a Teutonic word for the actual thing, and a Romance word for its reflexion.

5 In bourgeois societies the economic fictio juris prevails, that every one, as a buyer, possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of commodities.

6 “La valeur consiste dans le rapport d’échange qui se trouve entre telle chose et telle autre entre telle mesure d’une production et telle mesure d’une autre.” [“Value consists in the exchange relation between one thing and another, between a given amount of one product and a given amount of another”] (Le Trosne: “De l’Intérêt Social.” Physiocrates, Ed. Daire. Paris, 1846. p. 889.)

7 “Nothing can have an intrinsick value.” (N. Barbon, l.c., p. 6); or as Butler says – “The value of a thing is just as much as it will bring.”

8 N. Barbon, l.c., p. 53 and 7.

9 “The value of them (the necessaries of life), when they are exchanged the one for another, is regulated by the quantity of labour necessarily required, and commonly taken in producing them.” (“Some Thoughts on the Interest of Money in General, and Particularly in the Publick Funds, &c.” Lond., p. 36) This remarkable anonymous work written in the last century, bears no date. It is clear, however, from internal evidence that it appeared in the reign of George II, about 1739 or 1740.

10 “Toutes les productions d’un même genre ne forment proprement qu’une masse, dont le prix se détermine en général et sans égard aux circonstances particulières.” [“Properly speaking, all products of the same kind form a single mass, and their price is determined in general and without regard to particular circumstances”] (Le Trosne, l.c., p. 893.)

11 K. Marx. l.c., p.6

12 I am inserting the parenthesis because its omission has often given rise to the misunderstanding that every product that is consumed by some one other than its producer is considered in Marx a commodity. [Engels, 4th German Edition]

13 Tutti i fenomeni dell’universo, sieno essi prodotti della mano dell’uomo, ovvero delle universali leggi della fisica, non ci danno idea di attuale creazione, ma unicamente di una modificazione della materia. Accostare e separare sono gli unici elementi che l’ingegno umano ritrova analizzando l’idea della riproduzione: e tanto e riproduzione di valore (value in use, although Verri in this passage of his controversy with the Physiocrats is not himself quite certain of the kind of value he is speaking of) e di ricchezze se la terra, l’aria e l’acqua ne’ campi si trasmutino in grano, come se colla mano dell’uomo il glutine di un insetto si trasmuti in velluto ovvero alcuni pezzetti di metalio si organizzino a formare una ripetizione.” [“All the phenomena of the universe, whether produced by the hand of man or through the universal laws of physics, are not actual new creations, but merely a modification of matter. Joining together and separating are the only elements which the human mind always finds on analysing the concept of reproduction and it is just the same with the reproduction of value” (value in use, although Verri in this passage of his controversy with the Physiocrats is not himself quite certain of the kind of value he is speaking of) “and of wealth, when earth, air and water in the fields are transformed into corn, or when the hand of man transforms the secretions of an insect into silk, or some pieces of metal are arranged to make the mechanism of a watch.”] – Pietro Verri, “Meditazioni sulla Economia Politica” [first printed in 1773] in Custodi’s edition of the Italian Economists, Parte Moderna, t. XV., p. 22.

14 Comp. Hegel, “Philosophie des Rechts.” Berlin, 1840. p. 250.

15 The reader must note that we are not speaking here of the wages or value that the labourer gets for a given labour time, but of the value of the commodity in which that labour time is materialised. Wages is a category that, as yet, has no existence at the present stage of our investigation.

16 In order to prove that labour alone is that all-sufficient and real measure, by which at all times the value of all commodities can be estimated and compared, Adam Smith says, “Equal quantities of labour must at all times and in all places have the same value for the labourer. In his normal state of health, strength, and activity, and with the average degree of skill that he may possess, he must always give up the same portion of his rest, his freedom, and his happiness.” (“Wealth of Nations,” b. I. ch. V.) On the one hand Adam Smith here (but not everywhere) confuses the determination of value by means of the quantity of labour expended in the production of commodities, with the determination of the values of commodities by means of the value of labour, and seeks in consequence to prove that equal quantities of labour have always the same value. On the other hand he has a presentiment, that labour, so far as it manifests itself in the value of commodities, counts only as expenditure of labour power, but he treats this expenditure as the mere sacrifice of rest, freedom, and happiness, not as at the same time the normal activity of living beings. But then, he has the modern wage-labourer in his eye. Much more aptly, the anonymous predecessor of Adam Smith, quoted above in note 9, this chapter, says “one man has employed himself a week in providing this necessary of life ... and he that gives him some other in exchange cannot make a better estimate of what is a proper equivalent, than by computing what cost him just as much labour and time; which in effect is no more than exchanging one man’s labour in one thing for a time certain, for another man’s labour in another thing for the same time.” (l.c., p. 39.) [The English language has the advantage of possessing different words for the two aspects of labour here considered. The labour which creates use value, and counts qualitatively, is Work, as distinguished from Labour, that which creates Value and counts quantitatively, is Labour as distinguished from Work - Engels]

17 The few economists, amongst whom is S. Bailey, who have occupied themselves with the analysis of the form of value, have been unable to arrive at any result, first, because they confuse the form of value with value itself; and second, because, under the coarse influence of the practical bourgeois, they exclusively give their attention to the quantitative aspect of the question. “The command of quantity ... constitutes value.” (“Money and its Vicissitudes.” London, 1837, p. 11. By S. Bailey.)

18 The celebrated Franklin, one of the first economists, after Wm. Petty, who saw through the nature of value, says: “Trade in general being nothing else but the exchange of labour for labour, the value of all things is ... most justly measured by labour.” (“The works of B. Franklin, &c.,” edited by Sparks. Boston, 1836, Vol. II., p. 267.) Franklin is unconscious that by estimating the value of everything in labour, he makes abstraction from any difference in the sorts of labour exchanged, and thus reduces them all to equal human labour. But although ignorant of this, yet he says it. He speaks first of “the one labour,” then of “the other labour,” and finally of “labour,” without further qualification, as the substance of the value of everything.

19 In a sort of way, it is with man as with commodities. Since he comes into the world neither with a looking glass in his hand, nor as a Fichtian philosopher, to whom “I am I” is sufficient, man first sees and recognises himself in other men. Peter only establishes his own identity as a man by first comparing himself with Paul as being of like kind. And thereby Paul, just as he stands in his Pauline personality, becomes to Peter the type of the genus homo.

20 Value is here, as occasionally in the preceding pages, used in sense of value determined as to quantity, or of magnitude of value.

21 This incongruity between the magnitude of value and its relative expression has, with customary ingenuity, been exploited by vulgar economists. For example – “Once admit that A falls, because B, with which it is exchanged, rises, while no less labour is bestowed in the meantime on A, and your general principle of value falls to the ground... If he [Ricardo] allowed that when A rises in value relatively to B, B falls in value relatively to A, he cut away the ground on which he rested his grand proposition, that the value of a commodity is ever determined by the labour embodied in it, for if a change in the cost of A alters not only its own value in relation to B, for which it is exchanged, but also the value of B relatively to that of A, though no change has taken place in the quantity of labour to produce B, then not only the doctrine falls to the ground which asserts that the quantity of labour bestowed on an article regulates its value, but also that which affirms the cost of an article to regulate its value’ (J. Broadhurst: “Political Economy,” London, 1842, pp. 11 and 14.) Mr. Broadhurst might just as well say: consider the fractions 10/20, 10/50, 10/100, &c., the number 10 remains unchanged, and yet its proportional magnitude, its magnitude relatively to the numbers 20, 50, 100 &c., continually diminishes. Therefore the great principle that the magnitude of a whole number, such as 10, is “regulated” by the number of times unity is contained in it, falls to the ground. [The author explains in section 4 of this chapter, pp. 80-81, note 2 (note 33 of this document), what he understands by “Vulgar Economy.” – Engels]

22 Such expressions of relations in general, called by Hegel reflex categories, form a very curious class. For instance, one man is king only because other men stand in the relation of subjects to him. They, on the contrary, imagine that they are subjects because he is king.

23 F. L. A. Ferrier, sous-inspecteur des douanes, “Du gouvernement considéré dans ses rapports avec le commerce,” Paris, 1805; and Charles Ganilh, “Des Systèmes d’Economie Politique, – 2nd ed., Paris, 1821.

24 In Homer, for instance, the value of an article is expressed in a series of different things II. VII. 472-475.

25 For this reason, we can speak of the coat value of the linen when its value is expressed in coats, or of its corn value when expressed in corn, and so on. Every such expression tells us, that what appears in the use values, coat, corn, &c., is the value of the linen. “The value of any commodity denoting its relation in exchange, we may speak of it as ... corn value, cloth value, according to the commodity with which it is compared; and hence there are a thousand different kinds of value, as many kinds of value as there are commodities in existence, and all are equally real and equally nominal.” (“A Critical Dissertation on the Nature, Measures and Causes of Value: chiefly in reference to the writings of Mr. Ricardo and his followers.” By the author of “Essays on the Formation, &c., of Opinions.” London, 1825, p. 39.) S. Bailey, the author of this anonymous work, a work which in its day created much stir in England, fancied that, by thus pointing out the various relative expressions of one and the same value, he had proved the impossibility of any determination of the concept of value. However narrow his own views may have been, yet, that he laid his finger on some serious defects in the Ricardian Theory, is proved by the animosity with which he was attacked by Ricardo’s followers. See the Westminster Review  for example.

26 It is by no means self-evident that this character of direct and universal exchangeability is, so to speak, a polar one, and as intimately connected with its opposite pole, the absence of direct exchangeability, as the positive pole of the magnet is with its negative counterpart. It may therefore be imagined that all commodities can simultaneously have this character impressed upon them, just as it can be imagined that all Catholics can be popes together. It is, of course, highly desirable in the eyes of the petit bourgeois, for whom the production of commodities is the nec plus ultra of human freedom and individual independence, that the inconveniences resulting from this character of commodities not being directly exchangeable, should be removed. Proudhon’s socialism is a working out of this Philistine Utopia, a form of socialism which, as I have elsewhere shown, does not possess even the merit of originality. Long before his time, the task was attempted with much better success by Gray, Bray, and others. But, for all that, wisdom of this kind flourishes even now in certain circles under the name of “science.” Never has any school played more tricks with the word science, than that of Proudhon, for “wo Begriffe fehlen, Da stellt zur rechten Zeit ein Wort sich ein.” [“Where thoughts are absent, Words are brought in as convenient replacements,” Goethe’s, Faust, See Proudhon’s Philosophy of Poverty]

26a In the German edition, there is the following footnote here: “One may recall that China and the tables began to dance when the rest of the world appeared to be standing still – pour encourager les autres  [to encourage the others].” The defeat of the 1848-49 revolutions was followed by a period of dismal political reaction in Europe. At that time, spiritualism, especially table-turning, became the rage among the European aristocracy. In 1850-64, China was swept by an anti-feudal liberation movement in the form of a large-scale peasant war, the Taiping Revolt. – Note by editors of MECW.

27 Among the ancient Germans the unit for measuring land was what could be harvested in a day, and was called Tagwerk, Tagwanne (jurnale, or terra jurnalis, or diornalis), Mannsmaad, &c. (See G. L. von Maurer, “Einleitung zur Geschichte der Mark, &c. Verfassung,” Munchen, 1854, p. 129 sq.)

28 When, therefore, Galiani says: Value is a relation between persons – “La Ricchezza e una ragione tra due persone,” – he ought to have added: a relation between persons expressed as a relation between things. (Galiani: Della Moneta, p. 221, V. III. of Custodi’s collection of “Scrittori Classici Italiani di Economia Politica.” Parte Moderna, Milano 1803.)

29 “What are we to think of a law that asserts itself only by periodical revolutions? It is just nothing but a law of Nature, founded on the want of knowledge of those whose action is the subject of it.” (Friedrich Engels: “Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationalökonomie,” in the “Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher,” edited by Arnold Ruge and Karl Marx. Paris. 1844.)

30 Even Ricardo has his stories à la Robinson. “He makes the primitive hunter and the primitive fisher straightway, as owners of commodities, exchange fish and game in the proportion in which labour time is incorporated in these exchange values. On this occasion he commits the anachronism of making these men apply to the calculation, so far as their implements have to be taken into account, the annuity tables in current use on the London Exchange in the year 1817. The parallelograms of Mr. Owen appear to be the only form of society, besides the bourgeois form, with which he was acquainted.” (Karl Marx: “Zur Kritik, &c..” pp. 38, 39)

31 A ridiculous presumption has latterly got abroad that common property in its primitive form is specifically a Slavonian, or even exclusively Russian form. It is the primitive form that we can prove to have existed amongst Romans, Teutons, and Celts, and even to this day we find numerous examples, ruins though they be, in India. A more exhaustive study of Asiatic, and especially of Indian forms of common property, would show how from the different forms of primitive common property, different forms of its dissolution have been developed. Thus, for instance, the various original types of Roman and Teutonic private property are deducible from different forms of Indian common property.” (Karl Marx, “Zur Kritik, &c.,” p. 10.)

32 The insufficiency of Ricardo’s analysis of the magnitude of value, and his analysis is by far the best, will appear from the 3rd and 4th books of this work. As regards value in general, it is the weak point of the classical school of Political Economy that it nowhere expressly and with full consciousness, distinguishes between labour, as it appears in the value of a product, and the same labour, as it appears in the use value of that product. Of course the distinction is practically made, since this school treats labour, at one time under its quantitative aspect, at another under its qualitative aspect. But it has not the least idea, that when the difference between various kinds of labour is treated as purely quantitative, their qualitative unity or equality, and therefore their reduction to abstract human labour, is implied. For instance, Ricardo declares that he agrees with Destutt de Tracy in this proposition: “As it is certain that our physical and moral faculties are alone our original riches, the employment of those faculties, labour of some kind, is our only original treasure, and it is always from this employment that all those things are created which we call riches... It is certain, too, that all those things only represent the labour which has created them, and if they have a value, or even two distinct values, they can only derive them from that (the value) of the labour from which they emanate.” (Ricardo, “The Principles of Pol. Econ.,” 3 Ed. Lond. 1821, p. 334.) We would here only point out, that Ricardo puts his own more profound interpretation upon the words of Destutt. What the latter really says is, that on the one hand all things which constitute wealth represent the labour that creates them, but that on the other hand, they acquire their “two different values” (use value and exchange value) from “the value of labour.” He thus falls into the commonplace error of the vulgar economists, who assume the value of one commodity (in this case labour) in order to determine the values of the rest. But Ricardo reads him as if he had said, that labour (not the value of labour) is embodied both in use value and exchange value. Nevertheless, Ricardo himself pays so little attention to the two-fold character of the labour which has a two-fold embodiment, that he devotes the whole of his chapter on “Value and Riches, Their Distinctive Properties,” to a laborious examination of the trivialities of a J.B. Say. And at the finish he is quite astonished to find that Destutt on the one hand agrees with him as to labour being the source of value, and on the other hand with J. B. Say as to the notion of value.

33 It is one of the chief failings of classical economy that it has never succeeded, by means of its analysis of commodities, and, in particular, of their value, in discovering that form under which value becomes exchange value. Even Adam Smith and Ricardo, the best representatives of the school, treat the form of value as a thing of no importance, as having no connection with the inherent nature of commodities. The reason for this is not solely because their attention is entirely absorbed in the analysis of the magnitude of value. It lies deeper. The value form of the product of labour is not only the most abstract, but is also the most universal form, taken by the product in bourgeois production, and stamps that production as a particular species of social production, and thereby gives it its special historical character. If then we treat this mode of production as one eternally fixed by Nature for every state of society, we necessarily overlook that which is the differentia specifica of the value form, and consequently of the commodity form, and of its further developments, money form, capital form, &c. We consequently find that economists, who are thoroughly agreed as to labour time being the measure of the magnitude of value, have the most strange and contradictory ideas of money, the perfected form of the general equivalent. This is seen in a striking manner when they treat of banking, where the commonplace definitions of money will no longer hold water. This led to the rise of a restored mercantile system (Ganilh, &c.), which sees in value nothing but a social form, or rather the unsubstantial ghost of that form. Once for all I may here state, that by classical Political Economy, I understand that economy which, since the time of W. Petty, has investigated the real relations of production in bourgeois society in contradistinction to vulgar economy, which deals with appearances only, ruminates without ceasing on the materials long since provided by scientific economy, and there seeks plausible explanations of the most obtrusive phenomena, for bourgeois daily use, but for the rest, confines itself to systematising in a pedantic way, and proclaiming for everlasting truths, the trite ideas held by the self-complacent bourgeoisie with regard to their own world, to them the best of all possible worlds.

34 “Les économistes ont une singulière manière de procéder. Il n’y a pour eux que deux sortes d’institutions, celles de l’art et celles de la nature. Les institutions de la féodalité sont des institutions artificielles celles de la bourgeoisie sont des institutions naturelles. Ils ressemblent en ceci aux théologiens, qui eux aussi établissent deux sortes de religions. Toute religion qui n’est pas la leur, est une invention des hommes tandis que leur propre religion est une émanation de Dieu ‒ Ainsi il y a eu de l’histoire, mais il n’y en a plus.” [“Economists have a singular method of procedure. There are only two kinds of institutions for them, artificial and natural. The institutions of feudalism are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural institutions. In this they resemble the theologians, who likewise establish two kinds of religion. Every religion which is not theirs is an invention of men, while their own is an emanation from God. ... Thus there has been history, but there is no longer any”] (Karl Marx. Misère de la Philosophie. Réponse a la Philosophie de la Misère par M. Proudhon, 1847, p. 113.) Truly comical is M. Bastiat, who imagines that the ancient Greeks and Romans lived by plunder alone. But when people plunder for centuries, there must always be something at hand for them to seize; the objects of plunder must be continually reproduced. It would thus appear that even Greeks and Romans had some process of production, consequently, an economy, which just as much constituted the material basis of their world, as bourgeois economy constitutes that of our modern world. Or perhaps Bastiat means, that a mode of production based on slavery is based on a system of plunder. In that case he treads on dangerous ground. If a giant thinker like Aristotle erred in his appreciation of slave labour, why should a dwarf economist like Bastiat be right in his appreciation of wage labour? I seize this opportunity of shortly answering an objection taken by a German paper in America, to my work, “Zur Kritik der Pol. Oekonomie, 1859.” In the estimation of that paper, my view that each special mode of production and the social relations corresponding to it, in short, that the economic structure of society, is the real basis on which the juridical and political superstructure is raised and to which definite social forms of thought correspond; that the mode of production determines the character of the social, political, and intellectual life generally, all this is very true for our own times, in which material interests preponderate, but not for the middle ages, in which Catholicism, nor for Athens and Rome, where politics, reigned supreme. In the first place it strikes one as an odd thing for any one to suppose that these well-worn phrases about the middle ages and the ancient world are unknown to anyone else. This much, however, is clear, that the middle ages could not live on Catholicism, nor the ancient world on politics. On the contrary, it is the mode in which they gained a livelihood that explains why here politics, and there Catholicism, played the chief part. For the rest, it requires but a slight acquaintance with the history of the Roman republic, for example, to be aware that its secret history is the history of its landed property. On the other hand, Don Quixote long ago paid the penalty for wrongly imagining that knight errantry was compatible with all economic forms of society.

35 “Observations on certain verbal disputes in Pol. Econ., particularly relating to value and to demand and supply” Lond., 1821, p. 16.

36 S. Bailey, l.c., p. 165.

37 The author of “Observations” and S. Bailey accuse Ricardo of converting exchange value from something relative into something absolute. The opposite is the fact. He has explained the apparent relation between objects, such as diamonds and pearls, in which relation they appear as exchange values, and disclosed the true relation hidden behind the appearances, namely, their relation to each other as mere expressions of human labour. If the followers of Ricardo answer Bailey somewhat rudely, and by no means convincingly, the reason is to be sought in this, that they were unable to find in Ricardo’s own works any key to the hidden relations existing between value and its form, exchange value.

1 In the 12th century, so renowned for its piety, they included amongst commodities some very delicate things. Thus a French poet of the period enumerates amongst the goods to be found in the market of Landit, not only clothing, shoes, leather, agricultural implements, &c., but also “femmes folles de leur corps.”

2 Proudhon begins by taking his ideal of Justice, of “justice éternelle,” from the juridical relations that correspond to the production of commodities: thereby, it may be noted, he proves, to the consolation of all good citizens, that the production of commodities is a form of production as everlasting as justice. Then he turns round and seeks to reform the actual production of commodities, and the actual legal system corresponding thereto, in accordance with this ideal. What opinion should we have of a chemist, who, instead of studying the actual laws of the molecular changes in the composition and decomposition of matter, and on that foundation solving definite problems, claimed to regulate the composition and decomposition of matter by means of the “eternal ideas,” of “naturalité” and “affinité”? Do we really know any more about “usury,” when we say it contradicts “justice éternelle,” “équité éternelle,” “mutualité éternelle,” and other “vérités éternelles” than the fathers of the church did when they said it was incompatible with “grâce éternelle,” “foi éternelle,” and “la volonté éternelle de Dieu”?

3 For two-fold is the use of every object.... The one is peculiar to the object as such, the other is not, as a sandal which may be worn, and is also exchangeable. Both are uses of the sandal, for even he who exchanges the sandal for the money or food he is in want of, makes use of the sandal as a sandal. But not in its natural way. For it has not been made for the sake of being exchanged.” (Aristoteles, “De Rep.” l. i. c. 9.)

4 From this we may form an estimate of the shrewdness of the petit-bourgeois socialism, which, while perpetuating the production of commodities, aims at abolishing the “antagonism” between money and commodities, and consequently, since money exists only by virtue of this antagonism, at abolishing money itself. We might just as well try to retain Catholicism without the Pope. For more on this point see my work, “Zur Kritik der Pol. Oekon.,” p. 61, sq.

5 So long as, instead of two distinct use-values being exchanged, a chaotic mass of articles are offered as the equivalent of a single article, which is often the case with savages, even the direct barter of products is in its first infancy.

6 Karl Marx, l.c., p. 135. “I metalli ... naturalmente moneta.” [“The metals ... are by their nature money.”] (Galiani, “Della moneta” in Custodi’s Collection: Parte Moderna t. iii.)

7 For further details on this subject see in my work cited above, the chapter on “The precious metals.”

8 “Il danaro è la merce universale"(Verri, l.c., p. 16).

9 “Silver and gold themselves (which we may call by the general name of bullion) are ... commodities ... rising and falling in ... value ... Bullion, then, may be reckoned to be of higher value where the smaller weight will purchase the greater quantity of the product or manufacture of the countrey,” &c. (“A Discourse of the General Notions of Money, Trade, and Exchanges, as They Stand in Relation each to other.” By a Merchant. Lond., 1695, p. 7.) “Silver and gold, coined or uncoined, though they are used for a measure of all other things, are no less a commodity than wine, oil, tobacco, cloth, or stuffs.” (“A Discourse concerning Trade, and that in particular of the East Indies,” &c. London, 1689, p. 2.) “The stock and riches of the kingdom cannot properly be confined to money, nor ought gold and silver to be excluded from being merchandise.” ("The East-India Trade a Most Profitable Trade.” London, 1677, p. 4.)

10 L’oro e l’argento hanno valore come metalli anteriore all’esser moneta.” [“Gold and silver have value as metals before they are money”] (Galiani, l.c.) Locke says, “The universal consent of mankind gave to silver, on account of its qualities which made it suitable for money, an imaginary value.” Law, on the other hand. “How could different nations give an imaginary value to any single thing... or how could this imaginary value have maintained itself?” But the following shows how little he himself understood about the matter: “Silver was exchanged in proportion to the value in use it possessed, consequently in proportion to its real value. By its adoption as money it received an additional value (une valeur additionnelle).” (Jean Law: “Considérations sur le numéraire et le commerce” in E. Daire’s Edit. of “Economistes Financiers du XVIII siècle,” p. 470.)

11 “L’Argent en (des denrées) est le signe.” [“Money is their (the commodities’) symbol”] (V. de Forbonnais: “Eléments du Commerce, Nouv. Edit. Leyde, 1766,” t. II., p. 143.) “Comme signe il est attiré par les denrées.” [“As a symbol it is attracted by the commodities”] (l.c., p. 155.) “L’argent est un signe d’une chose et la représente.” [“Money is a symbol of a thing and represents it.”] (Montesquieu: “Esprit des Lois,” (Oeuvres, Lond. 1767, t. II, p. 2.) “L’argent n’est pas simple signe, car il est lui-même richesse, il ne représente pas les valeurs, il les équivaut.” [“Money is not a mere symbol, for it is itself wealth; it does not represent the values, it is their equivalents”] (Le Trosne, l.c., p. 910.) “The notion of value contemplates the valuable article as a mere symbol - the article counts not for what it is, but for what it is worth.” (Hegel, l.c., p. 100.) Lawyers started long before economists the idea that money is a mere symbol, and that the value of the precious metals is purely imaginary. This they did in the sycophantic service of the crowned heads, supporting the right of the latter to debase the coinage, during the whole of the middle ages, by the traditions of the Roman Empire and the conceptions of money to be found in the Pandects. “Qu’aucun puisse ni doive faire doute,” [“Let no one call into question,”] says an apt scholar of theirs, Philip of Valois, in a decree of 1346, “que à nous et à notre majesté royale n’appartiennent seulement ... le mestier, le fait, l’état, la provision et toute l’ordonnance des monnaies, de donner tel cours, et pour tel prix comme il nous plait et bon nous semble.” [“that the trade, the composition, the supply and the power of issuing ordinances on the currency ... belongs exclusively to us and to our royal majesty, to fix such a rate and at such price as it shall please us and seem good to us”] It was a maxim of the Roman Law that the value of money was fixed by decree of the emperor. It was expressly forbidden to treat money as a commodity. “Pecunias vero nulli emere fas erit, nam in usu publico constitutas oportet non esse mercem.” [“However, it shall not be lawful to anyone to buy money, for, as it was created for public use, it is not permissible for it to be a commodity”] Some good work on this question has been done by G. F. Pagnini: “Saggio sopra il giusto pregio delle cose, 1751"; Custodi “Parte Moderna,” t. II. In the second part of his work Pagnini directs his polemics especially against the lawyers.

12 “If a man can bring to London an ounce of Silver out of the Earth in Peru, in the same time that he can produce a bushel of Corn, then the one is the natural price of the other; now, if by reason of new or more easier mines a man can procure two ounces of silver as easily as he formerly did one, the corn will be as cheap at ten shillings the bushel as it was before at five shillings, caeteris paribus.” William Petty. “A Treatise of Taxes and Contributions.” Lond., 1667, p. 32.

13 The learned Professor Roscher, after first informing us that “the false definitions of money may be divided into two main groups: those which make it more, and those which make it less, than a commodity,” gives us a long and very mixed catalogue of works on the nature of money, from which it appears that he has not the remotest idea of the real history of the theory; and then he moralises thus: “For the rest, it is not to be denied that most of the later economists do not bear sufficiently in mind the peculiarities that distinguish money from other commodities” (it is then, after all, either more or less than a commodity!)... “So far, the semi-mercantilist reaction of Ganilh is not altogether without foundation.” (Wilhelm Roscher: “Die Grundlagen der Nationaloekonomie,” 3rd Edn. 1858, pp. 207-210.) More! less! not sufficiently! so far! not altogether! What clearness and precision of ideas and language! And such eclectic professorial twaddle is modestly baptised by Mr. Roscher, “the anatomico-physiological method” of Political Economy! One discovery however, he must have credit for, namely, that money is “a pleasant commodity.”

1 The question — Why does not money directly represent labour-time, so that a piece of paper may represent, for instance, x hours’ labour, is at bottom the same as the question why, given the production of commodities, must products take the form of commodities? This is evident, since their taking the form of commodities implies their differentiation into commodities and money. Or, why cannot private labour — labour for the account of private individuals — be treated as its opposite, immediate social labour? I have elsewhere examined thoroughly the Utopian idea of “labour-money” in a society founded on the production of commodities (l. c., p. 61, seq.). On this point I will only say further, that Owen’s “labour-money,” for instance, is no more “money” than a ticket for the theatre. Owen pre-supposes directly associated labour, a form of production that is entirely inconsistent with the production of commodities. The certificate of labour is merely evidence of the part taken by the individual in the common labour, and of his right to a certain portion of the common produce destined for consumption. But it never enters into Owen’s head to pre-suppose the production of commodities, and at the same time, by juggling with money, to try to evade the necessary conditions of that production.

2 Savages and half-civilised races use the tongue differently. Captain Parry says of the inhabitants on the west coast of Baffin’s Bay: “In this case (he refers to barter) they licked it (the thing represented to them) twice to their tongues, after which they seemed to consider the bargain satisfactorily concluded.” In the same way, the Eastern Esquimaux licked the articles they received in exchange. If the tongue is thus used in the North as the organ of appropriation, no wonder that, in the South, the stomach serves as the organ of accumulated property, and that a Kaffir estimates the wealth of a man by the size of his belly. That the Kaffirs know what they are about is shown by the following: at the same time that the official British Health Report of 1864 disclosed the deficiency of fat-forming food among a large part of the working-class, a certain Dr. Harvey (not, however, the celebrated discoverer of the circulation of the blood), made a good thing by advertising recipes for reducing the superfluous fat of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy.

3 See Karl Marx: “Zur Kritik, &c.” “Theorien von der Masseinheit des Geldes,” p. 53, seq.

4 “Wherever gold and silver have by law been made to perform the function of money or of a measure of value side by side, it has always been tried, but in vain, to treat them as one and the same material. To assume that there is an invariable ratio between the quantities of gold and silver in which a given quantity of labour-time is incorporated, is to assume in fact, that gold and silver are of one and the same material, and that a given mass of the less valuable metal, silver, is a constant fraction of a given mass of gold. From the reign of Edward III. to the time of George II., the history of money in England consists of one long series of perturbations caused by the clashing of the legally fixed ratio between the values of gold and silver, with the fluctuations in their real values. At one time gold was too high, at another, silver. The metal that for the time being was estimated below its value, was withdrawn from circulation, mated and exported. The ratio between the two metals was then again altered by law, but the new nominal ratio soon came into conflict again with the real one. In our own times, the slight and transient fall in the value of gold compared with silver, which was a consequence of the Indo-Chinese demand for silver, produced on a far more extended scale in France the same phenomena, export of silver, and its expulsion from circulation by gold. During the years 1855, 1856 and 1857, the excess in France of gold-imports over gold-exports amounted to £41,580,000, while the excess of silver-exports over silver-imports was £14,704,000. In fact, in those countries in which both metals are legally measures of value, and therefore both legal tender, so that everyone has the option of paying in either metal, the metal that rises in value is at a premium, and, like every other commodity, measures its price in the over-estimated metal which alone serves in reality as the standard of value. The result of all experience and history with regard to this equation is simply that, where two commodities perform by law the functions of a measure of value, in practice one alone maintains that position.” (Karl Marx, l.c., pp. 52, 53.)

5 The peculiar circumstance, that while the ounce of gold serves in England as the unit of the standard of money, the pound sterling does not form an aliquot part of it, has been explained as follows: “Our coinage was originally adapted to the employment of silver only, hence, an ounce of silver can always be divided into a certain adequate number of pieces of coin, but as gold was introduced at a later period into a coinage adapted only to silver, an ounce of gold cannot be coined into an aliquot number of pieces.” Maclaren, “A Sketch of the History of the Currency.” London, 1858, p. 16.

6 With English writers the confusion between measure of value and standard of price (standard of value) is indescribable. Their functions, as well as their names, are constantly interchanged.

7 Moreover, it has not general historical validity.

8 It is thus that the pound sterling in English denotes less than one-third of its original weight; the pound Scot, before the union, only 1-36th; the French livre, 1-74th; the Spanish maravedi, less than 1-1,000th; and the Portuguese rei a still smaller fraction.

9 “Le monete le quali oggi sono ideal, sono le piû antiche d’ogni nazione, e tutte furono un tempo real, e perche erano reali con esse si contava” [“The coins which today are ideal are the oldest coins of every nation, and all of them were once real, and precisely because they were real they were used for calculation”] (Galiani: Della moneta, l.c., p. 153.)

10 David Urquhart remarks in his “Familiar Words” on the monstrosity (!) that now-a-days a pound (sterling), which is the unit of the English standard of money, is equal to about a quarter of an ounce of gold. “This is falsifying a measure, not establishing a standard.” He sees in this “false denomination” of the weight of gold, as in everything else, the falsifying hand of civilisation.

11 When Anacharsis was asked for what purposes the Greeks used money, he replied, “For reckoning.” (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 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 à dire qu’une valeur d’un million en argent vaut plus qu’une valeur égale 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 égale.” [“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 “ec se tou ... puros t’antameeibesqai panta, jhsin d’Hracleitos, cai pur apantwn, woper crusou crhmata cai crhmatwn crusos.” [“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 générales” puts it, “Vendre est acheter.” [“To sell is to buy.”]

19 “Le prix d’une marchandise ne pouvant être payé que par le prix d’une autre marchandise” (Mercier de la Rivière: “L’Ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés 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 représente, dans nos mains, les choses que nous pouvons désirer d’acheter, il y représente 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 Rivière, 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 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 imprimé 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 célérité de son mouvement (c. de l’argent) supplée à sa quantité. Lorsqu’il en est besoin il ne fait que glisser d’une main dans l’autre sans s’arrêter 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 hath, 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. Just as there is a certain proportion of farthings necessary in 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. 1734, p. 5.) A careful comparison of this book with Hume’s “Essays,” proves to my mind without doubt that Hume was acquainted with and made use of Vanderlint’s work, which is certainly an important one. The opinion that prices are determined by the quantity of the circulating medium, was also held by Barbon and other much earlier writers. “No inconvenience,” says Vanderlint, “can arise by an unrestrained trade, but very great advantage; since, if the cash of the nation be decreased by it, which prohibitions are designed to prevent, those nations that get the cash will certainly find everything advance in price, as the cash increases amongst them. And ... our manufactures, and everything else, will soon become so moderate as to turn the balance of trade in our favour, and thereby fetch the money back again.” (l.c.. pp. 43, 44.)

33 That the price of each single kind of commodity forms a part of the sum of the prices of all the commodities in circulation, is a self-evident proposition. But how use-values which are incommensurable with regard to each other, are to be exchanged, en masse for the total sum of gold and silver in a country, is quite incomprehensible. If we start from the notion that all commodities together form one single commodity, of which each is but an aliquot part, we get the following beautiful result: The total commodity = x cwt. of gold; commodity A = an aliquot part of the total commodity = the same aliquot part of x cwt. of gold. This is stated in all seriousness by Montesquieu: “Si l’on compare la masse de l’or et de l’argent qui est dans le monde avec la somme des marchandises qui s’y vend il est certain que chaque denrée ou marchandise, en particulier, pourra être comparée à une certaine portion de la masse entière. Supposons qu’il n’y ait qu’une seule denrée ou marchandise dans le monde, ou qu’il n’y ait qu’une seule qui s’achète, et qu’elle se divise comme l’argent: Cette partie de cette marchandise répondra à une partie de la masse de l’argent; la moitié du total de l’une à la moitié du total de l’autre, &c.... L’établissement du prix des choses dépend toujours fondamentalement de la raison du total des choses au total des signes.” [“If one compares the amount of gold and silver in the world with the sum of the commodities available, it is certain that each product or commodity, taken in isolation, could be compared with a certain portion of the total amount of money. Let us suppose that there is only one product, or commodity, in the world, or only one that can be purchased, and that it can be divided in the same way as money: a certain part of this commodity would then correspond to a part of the total amount of money; half the total of the one would correspond to half the total of the other &c. ... the determination of the prices of things always depends, fundamentally, on the relation between the total amount of things and the total amount of their monetary symbols”] (Montesquieu, l.c. t. III, pp. 12, 13.) As to the further development of this theory by Ricardo and his disciples, James Mill, Lord Overstone, and others, see “Zur Kritik, &c.,” pp. 140-146, and p. 150, sqq. John Stuart Mill, with his usual eclectic logic, understands how to hold at the same time the view of his father, James Mill, and the opposite view. On a comparison of the text of his compendium, “Principles of Pol. Econ.,” with his preface to the first edition, in which preface he announces himself as the Adam Smith of his day — we do not know whether to admire more the simplicity of the man, or that of the public, who took him, in good faith, for the Adam Smith he announced himself to be, although he bears about as much resemblance to Adam Smith as say General Williams, of Kars, to the Duke of Wellington. The original researches of Mr. J. S. Mill which are neither extensive nor profound, in the domain of Political Economy, will be found mustered in rank and file in his little work, “Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy,” which appeared in 1844. Locke asserts point blank the connexion between the absence of value in gold and silver, and the determination of their values by quantity alone. “Mankind having consented to put an imaginary value upon gold and silver ... the intrinsic value, regarded in these metals, is nothing but the quantity." (“Some Considerations,” &c., 1691, Works Ed. 1777, Vol. II., p. 15.)

34 It lies of course, entirely beyond my purpose to take into consideration such details as the s

eigniorage on minting. I will, however, cite for the benefit of the romantic sycophant, Adam Muller, who admires the “generous liberality” with which the English Government coins gratuitously, the following opinion of Sir Dudley North: “Silver and gold, like other commodities, have their ebbings and flowings. Upon the arrival of quantities from Spain ... it is carried into the Tower, and coined. Not long after there will come a demand for bullion to be exported again. If there is none, but all happens to be in coin, what then? Melt it down again; there’s no loss in it, for the coining costs the owner nothing. Thus the nation has been abused, and made to pay for the twisting of straw for asses to eat. If the merchant were made to pay the price of the coinage, he would not have sent his silver to the Tower without consideration, and coined money would always keep a value above uncoined silver.” (North, l.c., p. 18.) North was himself one of the foremost merchants in the reign of Charles II.

35 “If silver never exceed what is wanted for the smaller payments it cannot be collected in sufficient quantities for the larger payments ... the use of gold in the main payments necessarily implies also its use in the retail trade: those who have gold coin offering them for small purchases, and receiving with the commodity purchased a balance of silver in return; by which means the surplus of silver that would otherwise encumber the retail dealer, is drawn off and dispersed into general circulation. But if there is as much silver as will transact the small payments independent of gold, the retail trader must then receive silver for small purchases; and it must of necessity accumulate in his hands.” (David Buchanan; “Inquiry into the Taxation and Commercial Policy of Great Britain.” Edinburgh, 1844, pp. 248, 249.)

36 The mandarin Wan-mao-in, the Chinese Chancellor of the Exchequer, took it into his head one day to lay before the Son of Heaven a proposal that secretly aimed at converting the assignats of the empire into convertible bank-notes. The assignats Committee, in its report of April, 1854, gives him a severe snubbing. Whether he also received the traditional drubbing with bamboos is not stated. The concluding part of the report is as follows: — “The Committee has carefully examined his proposal and finds that it is entirely in favour of the merchants, and that no advantage will result to the crown.” (“Arbeiten der Kaiserlich Russischen Gesandtschaft zu Peking über China.” Aus dem Russischen von Dr. K. Abel und F. A. Mecklenburg. Erster Band. Berlin, 1858, p. 47 sq.) In his evidence before the Committee of the House of Lords on the Bank Acts, a governor of the Bank of England says, with regard to the abrasion of gold coins during currency: “Every year a fresh class of sovereigns becomes too light. The class which one year passes with full weight, loses enough by wear and tear to draw the scales next year against it.” (House of Lords’ Committee, 1848, n. 429.)

37 The following passage from Fullarton shows the want of clearness on the part of even the best writers on money, in their comprehension of its various functions: “That, as far as concerns our domestic exchanges, all the monetary functions which are usually performed by gold and silver coins, may be performed as effectually by a circulation of inconvertible notes paying no value but that factitious and conventional value they derive from the law is a fact which admits, I conceive, of no denial. Value of this description may be made to answer all the purposes of intrinsic value, and supersede even the necessity for a standard, provided only the quantity of issues be kept under due limitation.” (Fullerton: “Regulation of Currencies,” London, 1845, p. 21.) Because the commodity that serves as money is capable of being replaced in circulation by mere symbols of value, therefore its functions as a measure of value and a standard of prices are declared to be superfluous!

38 From the fact that gold and silver, so far as they are coins, or exclusively serve as the medium of circulation, become mere tokens of themselves, Nicholas Barbon deduces the right of Governments “to raise money,” that is, to give to the weight of silver that is called a shilling the name of a greater weight, such as a crown; and so to pay creditors shillings, instead of crowns. “Money does wear and grow lighter by often telling over... It is the denomination and currency of the money that men regard in bargaining, and not the quantity of silver...’Tis the public authority upon the metal that makes it money.” (N. Barbon, l.c., pp. 29, 30, 25.)

39 “Une richesse en argent n’est que ... richesse en productions, converties en argent.” [“Monetary wealth is nothing but ... wealth in products, transformed into money”] (Mercier de la Rivière, l.c.) “Une valeur en productions n’a fait que changer de forme.” [“A value in the form of products, which has merely changed its form.”] (Id., p. 486.)

40 “’Tis by this practice’ they keep all their goods and manufactures at such low rates.” (Vanderlint, l.c., pp. 95, 96.)

41 “Money ... is a pledge.” (John Bellers: “Essays about the Poor, Manufactures, Trade, Plantations, and Immorality,” Lond., 1699, p. 13.)

42 A purchase, in a “categorical” sense, implies that gold and silver are already the converted form of commodities, or the product of a sale.

43 Henry III., most Christian king of France, robbed cloisters of their relics, and turned them into money. It is well known what part the despoiling of the Delphic Temple, by the Phocians, played in the history of Greece. Temples with the ancients served as the dwellings of the gods of commodities. They were “sacred banks.” With the Phoenicians, a trading people par excellence, money was the transmuted shape of everything. It was, therefore, quite in order that the virgins, who, at the feast of the Goddess of Love, gave themselves up to strangers, should offer to the goddess the piece of money they received.

43a       “Gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold!
Thus much of this, will make black white; foul, fair;
Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant.
... What this, you gods? Why, this
Will lug your priests and servants from your sides;
Pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads;
This yellow slave
Will knit and break religions; bless the accurs’d;
Make the hoar leprosy ador’d; place thieves,
And give them title, knee and approbation,
With senators on the bench; this is it,
That makes the wappen’d widow wed again:
... Come damned earth,
Though common whore of mankind.”
(Shakespeare: Timon of Athens.)

^43b       “Money! Nothing worse
in our lives, so current, rampant, so corrupting.
Money — you demolish cities, root men from their homes,
you train and twist good minds and set them on
to the most atrocious schemes. No limit,
you make them adept at every kind of outrage,
every godless crimes — money!”
(Sophocles, Antigone.)

44 “The desire of avarice to draw Pluto himself out of the bowels of the earth.” (The Deipnosophists, VI, 23, Athenaeus)

45 “Accrescere quanto più si può il numero de’venditori d’ogni merce, diminuere quanto più si puo il numero dei compratori, questi sono i cardini sui quali si raggirano tutte le operazioni di economia politica.” [“These are the pivots around which all the measures of political economy turn: the maximum possible increase in the number of sellers of each commodity, and the maximum possible decrease in the number of buyers”] (Verri, l.c., p. 52.)

46 “There is required for carrying on the trade of the nation a determinate sum of specifick money which varies, and is sometimes more, sometimes less, as the circumstances we are in require.... This ebbing and flowing of money supplies and accommodates itself, without any aid of Politicians.... The buckets work alternately; when money is scarce, bullion is coined; when bullion is scarce, money is melted.” (Sir D. North, l.c., Postscript, p. 3.) John Stuart Mill, who for a long time was an official of the East India Company, confirms the fact that in India silver ornaments still continue to perform directly the functions of a hoard. The silver ornaments are brought out and coined when there is a high rate of interest, and go back again when the rate of interest falls. (J. S. Mill’s Evidence “Reports on Bank Acts,” 1857, 2084.) According to a Parliamentary document of 1864 on the gold and silver import and export of India, the import of gold and silver in 1863 exceeded the export by £19,367,764. During the 8 years immediately preceding 1864, the excess of imports over exports of the precious metals amounted to £109,652,917. During this century far more than £200,000,000 has been coined in India.

47 The following shows the debtor and creditor relations existing between English traders at the beginning of the 18th century. “Such a spirit of crudity reigns here in England among the men of trade, that is not to be met with in any other society of men, nor in any other kingdom of the world.” (“An Essay on Credit and the Bankrupt Act,” Lond., 1707, p. 2.)

48 It will be seen from the following quotation from my book which appeared in 1859, why I take no notice in the text of an opposite form: “Contrariwise, in the process in M—C, the money can be alienated as a real means of purchase, and in that way, the price of the commodity can be realised before the use-value of the money is realised and the commodity actually delivered. This occurs constantly under the every-day form of prepayments. And it is under this form, that the English government purchases opium from the ryots of India.... In these cases, however, the money always acts as a means of purchase.... Of course capital also is advanced in the shape of money.... This point of view, however, does not fall within the horizon of simple circulation.” (“Zur Kritik, &c.,” pp. 119, 120.)

49 The monetary crisis referred to in the text, being a phase of every crisis, must be clearly distinguished from that particular form of crisis, which also is called a monetary crisis, but which may be produced by itself as an independent phenomenon in such a way as to react only indirectly on industry and commerce. The pivot of these crises is to be found in moneyed capital, and their sphere of direct action is therefore the sphere of that capital, viz., banking, the stock exchange, and finance.

50 “The sudden reversion from a system of credit to a system of hard cash heaps theoretical fright on top of the practical panic; and the dealers by whose agency circulation is affected, shudder before the impenetrable mystery in which their own economic relations are involved” (Karl Marx, l.c., p. 126.) “The poor stand still, because the rich have no money to employ them, though they have the same land and hands to provide victuals and clothes, as ever they had; ...which is the true riches of a nation, and not the money.” John Bellers, Proposals for Raising a College of Industry, London, 1696, p3.

51 he following shows how such times are exploited by the “amis du commerce.” “On one occasion (1839) an old grasping banker (in the city) in his private room raised the lid of the desk he sat over, and displayed to a friend rolls of bank-notes, saying with intense glee there were £600,000 of them, they were held to make money tight, and would all be let out after three o’clock on the same day.” (“The Theory of Exchanges. The Bank Charter Act of 1844.” Lond. 1864, p. 81). The Observer, a semi-official government organ, contained the following paragraph on 24th April, 1864: “Some very curious rumours are current of the means which have been resorted to in order to create a scarcity of banknotes.... Questionable as it would seem, to suppose that any trick of the kind would be adopted, the report has been so universal that it really deserves mention.”

52 “The amount of purchases or contracts entered upon during the course of any given day, will not affect the quantity of money afloat on that particular day, but, in the vast majority of cases, will resolve themselves into multifarious drafts upon the quantity of money which may be afloat at subsequent dates more or less distant.... The bills granted or credits opened, to-day, need have no resemblance whatever, either in quantity, amount or duration, to those granted or entered upon to-morrow or next day, nay, many of today’s bills, and credits, when due, fall in with a mass of liabilities whose origins traverse a range of antecedent dates altogether indefinite, bills at 12, 6, 3 months or 1 often aggregating together to swell the common liabilities of one particular day....” (“The Currency Theory Reviewed; in a Letter to the Scottish People.” By a Banker in England. Edinburgh, 1845, pp. 29, 30 passim.)

53 As an example of how little ready money is required in true commercial operations, I give below a statement by one of the largest London houses of its yearly receipts and payments. Its transactions during the year 1856, extending to many millions of pounds sterling, are here reduced to the scale of one million.

.

54 “The course of trade being thus turned, from exchanging of goods for goods, or delivering and taking, to selling and paying, all the bargains ... are now stated upon the foot of a Price in money.” (“An Essay upon Publick Credit.” 3rd Ed. Lond., 1710, p. 8.)

55 “L’argent ... est devenu le bourreau de toutes choses.” Finance is the “alambic, qui a fait évaporer une quantité effroyable de biens et de denrées pour faire ce fatal précis.” “L’argent déclare la guerre à tout le genre humain.” [“Money ... has become the executioner of all things.” Finance is the “alembic that evaporates a frightful quantity of goods and commodities in order to obtain this fatal extract.” “Money [...] declares war [...] on the whole human race”] (Boisguillebert: “Dissertation sur la nature des richesses, de l’argent et des tributs.” Edit. Daire. Economistes financiers. Paris, 1843, t. i., pp. 413, 419, 417.)

56 “On Whitsuntide, 1824,” says Mr. Craig before the Commons’ Committee of 1826, “there was such an immense demand for notes upon the banks of Edinburgh, that by 11 o’clock they had not a note left in their custody. They sent round to all the different banks to borrow, but could not get them, and many of the transactions were adjusted by slips of paper only; yet by three o’clock the whole of the notes were returned into the banks from which they had issued! It was a mere transfer from hand to hand. “Although the average effective circulation of bank-notes in Scotland is less than three millions sterling, yet on certain pay days in the year, every single note in the possession of the bankers, amounting in the whole to about £7,000,000, is called into activity. On these occasions the notes have a single and specific function to perform, and so soon as they have performed it, they flow back into the various banks from which they issued. (See John Fullarton, “Regulation of Currencies.” Lond. 1845, p. 86, note.) In explanation it should be stated, that in Scotland, at the date of Fullarton’s work, notes and not cheques were used to withdraw deposits.

57 Note by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in the Russian edition: Apparently a slip of the pen. When writing inverse the author evidently meant direct.

58 To the question, “If there were occasion to raise 40 millions p. a., whether the same 6 millions (gold) ... would suffice for such revolutions and circulations thereof, as trade requires,” Petty replies in his usual masterly manner, “I answer yes: for the expense being 40 millions, if the revolutions were in such short circles, viz., weekly, as happens among poor artisans and labourers, who receive and pay every Saturday, then 40/52 parts of 1 million of money would answer these ends, but if the circles be quarterly, according to our custom of paying rent, and gathering taxes, then 10 millions were requisite. Wherefore, supposing payments in general to be of a mixed circle between one week and 13, then add 10 millions to 40/52, the half of which will be 5½, so as if we have 5½ millions we have enough.” (William Petty: “Political Anatomy of Ireland.” 1672, Edit.: Lond. 1691, pp. 13, 14.)

59 Hence the absurdity of every law prescribing that the banks of a country shall form reserves of that precious metal alone which circulates at home. The “pleasant difficulties” thus self-created by the Bank of England, are well known. On the subject of the great epochs in the history of the changes in the relative value of gold and silver, see Karl Marx, l.c., p. 136 sq. Sir Robert Peel, by his Bank Act of 1844, sought to tide over the difficulty, by allowing the Bank of England to issue notes against silver bullion, on condition that the reserve of silver should never exceed more than one-fourth of the reserve of gold. The value of silver being for that purpose estimated at its price in the London market.

Added in the 4th German edition. — [We find ourselves once more in a period of serious change in the relative values of gold and silver. About 25 years ago the ratio expressing the relative value of gold and silver was 15-1/2:1; now it is approximately 22:1, and silver is still constantly falling as against gold. This is essentially the result of a revolution in the mode of production of both metals. Formerly gold was obtained almost exclusively by washing it out from gold-bearing alluvial deposits, products of the weathering of auriferous rocks. Now this method has become inadequate and has been forced into the background by the processing of the quartz lodes themselves, a way of extraction which formerly was only of secondary importance, although well known to the ancients (Diodorus, III, 12-14) (Diodor’s v. Sicilien “Historische Bibliothek,” book III, 12-14. Stuttgart 1828, pp. 258-261). Moreover, not only were new huge silver deposits discovered in North America, in the Western part of the Rocky Mountains, but these and the Mexican silver mines were really opened up by the laying of railways, which made possible the shipment of modern machinery and fuel and in consequence the mining of silver on a very large scale at a low cost. However there is a great difference in the way the two metals occur in the quartz lodes. The gold is mostly native, but disseminated throughout the quartz in minute quantities. The whole mass of the vein must therefore be crushed and the gold either washed out or extracted by means of mercury. Often 1,000,000 grammes of quartz barely yield 1-3 and very seldom 30-60 grammes of gold. Silver is seldom found native, however it occurs in special quartz that is separated from the lode with comparative ease and contains mostly 40-90% silver; or it is contained, in smaller quantities, in copper, lead and other ores which in themselves are worthwhile working. From this alone it is apparent that the labour expended on the production of gold is rather increasing while that expended on silver production has decidedly decreased, which quite naturally explains the drop in the value of the latter. This fall in value would express itself in a still greater fall in price if the price of silver were not pegged even to-day by artificial means. But America’s rich silver deposits have so far barely been tapped, and thus the prospects are that the value of this metal will keep on dropping for rather a long time to come. A still greater contributing factor here is the relative decrease in the requirement of silver for articles of general use and for luxuries, that is its replacement by plated goods, aluminium, etc. One may thus gauge the utopianism of the bimetallist idea that compulsory international quotation will raise silver again to the old value ratio of 1:15-1/2. It is more likely that silver will forfeit its money function more and more in the markets of the world. — F E.]

60 The opponents, themselves, of the mercantile system, a system which considered the settlement of surplus trade balances in gold and silver as the aim of international trade, entirely misconceived the functions of money of the world. I have shown by the example of Ricardo in what way their false conception of the laws that regulate the quantity of the circulating medium, is reflected in their equally false conception of the international movement of the precious metals (l.c., pp. 150 sq.). His erroneous dogma: “An unfavourable balance of trade never arises but from a redundant currency.... The exportation of the coin is caused by its cheapness, and is not the effect, but the cause of an unfavourable balance,” already occurs in Barbon: “The Balance of Trade, if there be one, is not the cause of sending away the money out of a nation; but that proceeds from the difference of the value of bullion in every country.” (N. Barbon; l.c., pp. 59, 60.) MacCulloch in “The Literature of Political Economy, a classified catalogue, Lond. 1845,” praises Barbon for this anticipation, but prudently passes over the naive forms, in which Barbon clothes the absurd supposition on which the “currency principle” is based. The absence of real criticism and even of honesty, in that catalogue culminates in the sections devoted to the history of the theory of money; the reason is that MacCulloch in this part of the work is flattering Lord Overstone whom he calls “facile princeps argentanorum.”

61 For instance, in subsidies, money loans for carrying on wars or for enabling banks to resume cash payments, &c., it is the money-form, and no other, of value that may be wanted.

62 “I would desire, indeed, no more convincing evidence of the competency of the machinery of the hoards in specie-paying countries to perform every necessary office of international adjustment, without any sensible aid from the general circulation, than the facility with which France, when but just recovering from the shock of a destructive foreign invasion, completed within the space of 27 months the payment of her forced contribution of nearly 20 millions to the allied powers, and a considerable proportion of the sum in specie, without any perceptible contraction or derangement of her domestic currency, or even any alarming fluctuation of her exchanges.” (Fullerton, l.c., p. 141.) [Added in the 4th German edition. — We have a still more striking example in the facility with which the same France was able in 1871-73 to pay off within 30 months a forced contribution more than ten times as great, a considerable part of it likewise in specie. — F. E.]

63 “L’argent se partage entre les nations relativement au besoin qu’elles en ont ... étant toujours attiré par les productions.” [“Money is shared among the nations in accordance with their need for it ... as it is always attracted by the products”] (Le Trosne, l.c., p. 916.) “The mines which are continually giving gold and silver, do give sufficient to supply such a needful balance to every nation.” (J. Vanderlint, l.c., p. 40.)

64 “Exchanges rise and fall every week, and at some particular times in the year run high against a nation, and at other times run as high on the contrary.” (N. Barbon, l.c., p. 39)

65 These various functions are liable to come into dangerous conflict with one another whenever gold and silver have also to serve as a fund for the conversion of bank-notes.

66 “What money is more than of absolute necessity for a Home Trade, is dead stock ... and brings no profit to that country it’s kept in, but as it is transported in trade, as well as imported.” (John Bellers, “Essays,” p. 13.) “What if we have too much coin? We may melt down the heaviest and turn it into the splendour of plate, vessels or utensils of gold or silver, or send it out as a commodity, where the same is wanted or desired; or let it out at interest, where interest is high.” (W. Petty: “Quantulumcunque,” p. 39.) “Money is but the fat of the Body Politick, whereof too much doth as often hinder its agility, as too little makes it sick ... as fat lubricates the motion of the muscles, feeds in want of victuals, fills up the uneven cavities, and beautifies the body; so doth money in the state quicken its action, feeds from abroad in time of dearth at home, evens accounts ... and beautifies the whole; altho more especially the particular persons that have it in plenty.” (W. Petty, “Political Anatomy of Ireland,” p. 14.)

1 The contrast between the power, based on the personal relations of dominion and servitude, that is conferred by landed property, and the impersonal power that is given by money, is well expressed by the two French proverbs, “Nulle terre sans seigneur,” and “L’argent n’a pas de maître,” – “No land without its lord,” and “Money has no master.”

2 “Avec de l’argent on achète des marchandises et avec des marchandises on achète de l’argent.” [“With money one buys commodities, and with commodities one buys money”] (Mercier de la Rivière: “L’ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques,” p. 543.)

3 “When a thing is bought in order to be sold again, the sum employed is called money advanced; when it is bought not to be sold, it may be said to be expended.” — (James Steuart: “Works,” &c. Edited by Gen. Sir James Steuart, his son. Lond., 1805, V. I., p. 274.)

4 “On n’échange pas de l’argent contre de l’argent,” [“One does not exchange money for money,”] says Mercier de la Rivière to the Mercantilists (l.c., p. 486.) In a work, which, ex professo treats of “trade” and “speculation,” occurs the following: “All trade consists in the exchange of things of different kinds; and the advantage” (to the merchant?) “arises out of this difference. To exchange a pound of bread against a pound of bread ... would be attended with no advantage; ... Hence trade is advantageously contrasted with gambling, which consists in a mere exchange of money for money.” (Th. Corbet, “An Inquiry into the Causes and Modes of the Wealth of Individuals; or the Principles of Trade and Speculation Explained.” London, 1841, p. 5.) Although Corbet does not see that M-M, the exchange of money for money, is the characteristic form of circulation, not only of merchants’ capital but of all capital, yet at least he acknowledges that this form is common to gambling and to one species of trade, viz., speculation: but then comes MacCulloch and makes out, that to buy in order to sell, is to speculate, and thus the difference between Speculation and Trade vanishes. “Every transaction in which an individual buys produce in order to sell it again, is, in fact, a speculation.” (MacCulloch: “A Dictionary Practical, &c., of Commerce.” Lond., 1847, p. 1009.) With much more naiveté, Pinto, the Pindar of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, remarks, “Le commerce est un jeu: (taken from Locke) et ce n’est pas avec des gueux qu’on peut gagner. Si l’on gagnait longtemps en tout avec tous, il faudrait rendre de bon accord les plus grandes parties du profit pour recommencer le jeu.” [“Trade is a game, and nothing can be won from beggars. If one won everything from everybody all the time, it would be necessary to give back the greater part of the profit voluntarily, in order to begin the game again”] (Pinto: “Traité de la Circulation et du Crédit.” Amsterdam, 1771. p. 231,)

5 “Capital is divisible ... into the original capital and the profit, the increment to the capital ... although in practice this profit is immediately turned into capital, and set in motion with the original.” (F. Engels, “Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationalökonomie, in: Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, herausgegeben von Arnold Ruge und Karl Marx.” Paris, 1844, p. 99.)

6 Aristotle opposes Oeconomic to Chrematistic. He starts from the former. So far as it is the art of gaining a livelihood, it is limited to procuring those articles that are necessary to existence, and useful either to a household or the state. “True wealth (o aleqinos ploutos) consists of such values in use; for the quantity of possessions of this kind, capable of making life pleasant, is not unlimited. There is, however, a second mode of acquiring things, to which we may by preference and with correctness give the name of Chrematistic, and in this case there appear to be no limits to riches and possessions. Trade (e kapelike is literally retail trade, and Aristotle takes this kind because in it values in use predominate) does not in its nature belong to Chrematistic, for here the exchange has reference only to what is necessary to themselves (the buyer or seller).” Therefore, as he goes on to show, the original form of trade was barter, but with the extension of the latter, there arose the necessity for money. On the discovery of money, barter of necessity developed into kapelike, into trading in commodities, and this again, in opposition to its original tendency, grew into Chrematistic, into the art of making money. Now Chrematistic is distinguishable from Oeconomic in this way, that “in the case of Chrematistic circulation is the source of riches poietike crematon ... dia chrematon diaboles. And it appears to revolve about money, for money is the beginning and end of this kind of exchange (to nomisma stoiceion tes allages estin). Therefore also riches, such as Chrematistic strives for, are unlimited. Just as every art that is not a means to an end, but an end in itself, has no limit to its aims, because it seeks constantly to approach nearer and nearer to that end, while those arts that pursue means to an end, are not boundless, since the goal itself imposes a limit upon them, so with Chrematistic, there are no bounds to its aims, these aims being absolute wealth. Oeconomic not Chrematistic has a limit ... the object of the former is something different from money, of the latter the augmentation of money.... By confounding these two forms, which overlap each other, some people have been led to look upon the preservation and increase of money ad infinitum as the end and aim of Oeconomic.” (Aristoteles, De Rep. edit. Bekker, lib. l.c. 8, 9. passim.)

7 “Commodities (here used in the sense of use-values) are not the terminating object of the trading capitalist, money is his terminating object.” (Th. Chalmers, On Pol. Econ. &c., 2nd Ed., Glasgow, 1832, pp. 165, 166.)

8 “Il mercante non conta quasi per niente il lucro fatto, ma mira sempre al futuro.” [“The merchant counts the money he has made as almost nothing; he always looks to the future.”] (A. Genovesi, Lezioni di Economia Civile (1765), Custodi’s edit. of Italian Economists. Parte Moderna t. viii, p. 139.)

9 “The inextinguishable passion for gain, the auri sacra fames, will always lead capitalists.” (MacCulloch: “The Principles of Polit. Econ.” London, 1830, p. 179.) This view, of course, does not prevent the same MacCulloch and others of his kidney, when in theoretical difficulties, such, for example, as the question of over-production, from transforming the same capitalist into a moral citizen, whose sole concern is for use-values, and who even develops an insatiable hunger for boots, hats, eggs, calico, and other extremely familiar sorts of use-values.

10 Sozein is a characteristic Greek expression for hoarding. So in English to save has the same two meanings: sauver and épargner.

11 “Questo infinito che le cose non hanno in progresso, hanno in giro.” [“That infinity which things do not possess, they possess in circulation.”] (Galiani.)

12 “Ce n’est pas la matière qui fait le capital, mais la valeur de ces matières.” [“It is not matter which makes capital, but the value of that matter.”] (J. B. Say: “Traité d’Econ. Polit.” 3ème éd. Paris, 1817, t. II., p. 429.)

13 “Currency (!) employed in producing articles... is capital.” (Macleod: “The Theory and Practice of Banking.” London, 1855, v. 1, ch. i, p. 55.) “Capital is commodities.” (James Mill: “Elements of Pol. Econ.” Lond., 1821, p. 74.)

14 Capital: “portion fructifiante de la richesse accumulée... valeur permanente, multipliante.” (Sismondi: “Nouveaux Principes d’Econ. Polit.,” t. i., p. 88, 89.)

1 “L’échange est une transaction admirable dans laquelle les deux contractants gagnent - toujours (!)” [“Exchange is a transaction in which the two contracting parties always gain, both of them (!)”] (Destutt de Tracy: “Traité de la Volonté et de ses effets.” Paris, 1826, p. 68.) This work appeared afterwards as “Traité d’Econ. Polit.”

2 “Mercier de la Rivière,” l. c., p. 544.

3 “Que l’une de ces deux valeurs soit argent, ou qu’elles soient toutes deux marchandises usuelles, rien de plus indifférent en soi.” [“Whether one of those two values is money, or they are both ordinary commodities, is in itself a matter of complete indifference.”] (“Mercier de la Rivière,” l.c., p. 543.)

4 “Ce ne sont pas les contractants qui prononcent sur la valeur; elle est décidée avant la convention.” [“It is not the parties to a contract who decide on the value; that has been decided before the contract.”] (Le Trosne, p. 906.)

5 “Dove è egualità non è lucro.” (Galiani, “Della Moneta in Custodi, Parte Moderna,” t. iv., p. 244.)

6 “L’échange devient désavantageux pour l’une des parties, lorsque quelque chose étrangère vient diminuer ou exagérer le prix; alors l’égalité est blessée, mais la lésion procède de cette cause et non de l’échange.” [“The exchange becomes unfavourable for one of the parties when some external circumstance comes to lessen or increase the price; then equality is infringed, but this infringement arises from that cause and not from the exchange itself.”] (Le Trosne, l.c., p. 904.)

7 “L’échange est de sa nature un contrat d’égalité qui se fait de valeur pour valeur égale. Il n’est donc pas un moyen de s’enrichir, puisque l’on donne autant que l’on reçoit.” [“Exchange is by its nature a contract which rests on equality, i.e., it takes place between two equal values, and it is not a means of self-enrichment, since as much is given as is received.”] (Le Trosne, l.c., p. 903.)

8 Condillac: “Le Commerce et le Gouvernement” (1776). Edit. Daire et Molinari in the “Mélanges d’Econ. Polit.” Paris, 1847, pp. 267, 291.

9 Le Trosne, therefore, answers his friend Condillac with justice as follows: “Dans une ... société formée il n’y a pas de surabondant en aucun genre.” [“In a developed society absolutely nothing is superfluous.”] At the same time, in a bantering way, he remarks: “If both the persons who exchange receive more to an equal amount, and part with less to an equal amount, they both get the same.” It is because Condillac has not the remotest idea of the nature of exchange-value that he has been chosen by Herr Professor Wilhelm Roscher as a proper person to answer for the soundness of his own childish notions. See Roscher’s “Die Grundlagen der Nationalökonomie, Dritte Auflage,” 1858.

10 S. P. Newman: “Elements of Polit. Econ.” Andover and New York, 1835, p. 175.