77
Chapter 3
exchange between a commodity-owner and an owner of money, between two persons as opposed
to each other as the two poles of a magnet. They form two distinct acts, of polar and opposite
characters, when performed by one single person. Hence the identity of sale and purchase implies
that the commodity is useless, if, on being thrown into the alchemistical retort of circulation, it
does not come out again in the shape of money; if, in other words, it cannot be sold by its owner,
and therefore be bought by the owner of the money. That identity further implies that the
exchange, if it does take place, constitutes a period of rest, an interval, long or short, in the life of
the commodity. Since the first metamorphosis of a commodity is at once a sale and a purchase, it
is also an independent process in itself. The purchaser has the commodity, the seller has the
money, i.e., a commodity ready to go into circulation at any time. No one can sell unless some
one else purchases. But no one is forthwith bound to purchase, because he has just sold.
Circulation bursts through all restrictions as to time, place, and individuals, imposed by direct
barter, and this it effects by splitting up, into the antithesis of a sale and a purchase, the direct
identity that in barter does exist between the alienation of one’s own and the acquisition of some
other man’s product. To say that these two independent and antithetical acts have an intrinsic
unity, are essentially one, is the same as to say that this intrinsic oneness expresses itself in an
external antithesis. If the interval in time between the two complementary phases of the complete
metamorphosis of a commodity become too great, if the split between the sale and the purchase
become too pronounced, the intimate connexion between them, their oneness, asserts itself by
producing – a crisis. The antithesis, use-value and value; the contradictions that private labour is
bound to manifest itself as direct social labour, that a particularised concrete kind of labour has to
pass for abstract human labour; the contradiction between the personification of objects and the
representation of persons by things; all these antitheses and contradictions, which are immanent
in commodities, assert themselves, and develop their modes of motion, in the antithetical phases
of the metamorphosis of a commodity. These modes therefore imply the possibility, and no more
than the possibility, of crises. The conversion of this mere possibility into a reality is the result of
a long series of relations, that, from our present standpoint of simple circulation, have as yet no
existence.
25
B. The currency
26
of money
The change of form, C–M–C, by which the circulation of the material products of labour is
brought about, requires that a given value in the shape of a commodity shall begin the process,
and shall, also in the shape of a commodity, end it. The movement of the commodity is therefore
a circuit. On the other hand, the form of this movement precludes a circuit from being made by
the money. The result is not the return of the money, but its continued removal further and further
away from its starting-point. So long as the seller sticks fast to his money, which is the
transformed shape of his commodity, that commodity is still in the first phase of its
metamorphosis, and has completed only half its course. But so soon as he completes the process,
so soon as he supplements his sale by a purchase, the money again leaves the hands of its
possessor. It is true that if the weaver, after buying the Bible, sell more linen, money comes back
into his hands. But this return is not owing to the circulation of the first 20 yards of linen; that
circulation resulted in the money getting into the hands of the seller of the Bible. The return of
money into the hands of the weaver is brought about only by the renewal or repetition of the
process of circulation with a fresh commodity, which renewed process ends with the same result
as its predecessor did. Hence the movement directly imparted to money by the circulation of
commodities takes the form of a constant motion away from its starting-point, of a course from
the hands of one commodity-owner into those of another. This course constitutes its currency
(cours de la monnaie).
78
Chapter 3
The currency of money is the constant and monotonous repetition of the same process. The
commodity is always in the hands of the seller; the money, as a means of purchase, always in the
hands of the buyer. And money serves as a means of purchase by realising the price of the
commodity. This realisation transfers the commodity from the seller to the buyer and removes the
money from the hands of the buyer into those of the seller, where it again goes through the same
process with another commodity. That this one-sided character of the money’s motion arises out
of the two-sided character of the commodity’s motion, is a circumstance that is veiled over. The
very nature of the circulation of commodities begets the opposite appearance. The first
metamorphosis of a commodity is visibly, not only the money’s movement, but also that of the
commodity itself; in the second metamorphosis, on the contrary, the movement appears to us as
the movement of the money alone. In the first phase of its circulation the commodity changes
place with the money. Thereupon the commodity, under its aspect of a useful object, falls out of
circulation into consumption.
27
In its stead we have its value-shape – the money. It then goes
through the second phase of its circulation, not under its own natural shape, but under the shape
of money. The continuity of the movement is therefore kept up by the money alone, and the same
movement that as regards the commodity consists of two processes of an antithetical character, is,
when considered as the movement of the money, always one and the same process, a continued
change of places with ever fresh commodities. Hence the result brought about by the circulation
of commodities, namely, the replacing of one commodity by another, takes the appearance of
having been effected not by means of the change of form of the commodities but rather by the
money acting as a medium of circulation, by an action that circulates commodities, to all
appearance motionless in themselves, and transfers them from hands in which they are non-use-
values, to hands in which they are use-values; and that in a direction constantly opposed to the
direction of the money. The latter is continually withdrawing commodities from circulation and
stepping into their places, and in thus way continually moving further and further from its
starting-point. Hence although the movement of the money is merely the expression of the
circulation of commodities, yet the contrary appears to be the actual fact, and the circulation of
commodities seems to be the result of the movement of the money.
28
Again, money functions as a means of circulation only because in it the values of commodities
have independent reality. Hence its movement, as the medium of circulation, is, in fact, merely
the movement of commodities while changing their forms. This fact must therefore make itself
plainly visible in the currency of money. Thus the linen for instance, first of all changes its
commodity-form into its money-form. The second term of its first metamorphosis, C–M, the
money form, then becomes the first term of its final metamorphosis, M–C, its re-conversion into
the Bible. But each of these two changes of form is accomplished by an exchange between
commodity and money, by their reciprocal displacement. The same pieces of coin come into the
seller’s hand as the alienated form of the commodity and leave it as the absolutely alienable form
of the commodity. They are displaced twice. The first metamorphosis of the linen puts these coins
into the weaver’s pocket, the second draws them out of it. The two inverse changes undergone by
the same commodity are reflected in the displacement, twice repeated, but in opposite directions,
of the same pieces of coin.
If, on the contrary, only one phase of the metamorphosis is gone through, if there are only sales or
only purchases, then a given piece of money changes its place only once. Its second change of
place always expresses the second metamorphosis of the commodity, its re-conversion from
money. The frequent repetition of the displacement of the same coins reflects not only the series
of metamorphoses that a single commodity has gone through, but also the intertwining of the
innumerable metamorphoses in the world of commodities in general. It is a matter of course, that