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The use-value of the money-commodity becomes two-fold. In addition to its special use-value as
a commodity (gold, for instance, serving to stop teeth, to form the raw material of articles of
luxury, &c.), it acquires a formal use-value, originating in its specific social function.
Since all commodities are merely particular equivalents of money, the latter being their universal
equivalent, they, with regard to the latter as the universal commodity, play the parts of particular
commodities.
8
We have seen that the money-form is but the reflex, thrown upon one single commodity, of the
value relations between all the rest. That money is a commodity
9
is therefore a new discovery
only for those who, when they analyse it, start from its fully developed shape. The act of
exchange gives to the commodity converted into money, not its value, but its specific value-form.
By confounding these two distinct things some writers have been led to hold that the value of
gold and silver is imaginary.
10
The fact that money can, in certain functions, be replaced by mere
symbols of itself, gave rise to that other mistaken notion, that it is itself a mere symbol.
Nevertheless under this error lurked a presentiment that the money-form of an object is not an
inseparable part of that object, but is simply the form under which certain social relations
manifest themselves. In this sense every commodity is a symbol, since, in so far as it is value, it is
only the material envelope of the human labour spent upon it.
11
But if it be declared that the
social characters assumed by objects, or the material forms assumed by the social qualities of
labour under the régime of a definite mode of production, are mere symbols, it is in the same
breath also declared that these characteristics are arbitrary fictions sanctioned by the so-called
universal consent of mankind. This suited the mode of explanation in favour during the 18th
century. Unable to account for the origin of the puzzling forms assumed by social relations
between man and man, people sought to denude them of their strange appearance by ascribing to
them a conventional origin.
It has already been remarked above that the equivalent form of a commodity does not imply the
determination of the magnitude of its value. Therefore, although we may be aware that gold is
money, and consequently directly exchangeable for all other commodities, yet that fact by no
means tells how much 10 lbs., for instance, of gold is worth. Money, like every other commodity,
cannot express the magnitude of its value except relatively in other commodities. This value is
determined by the labour-time required for its production, and is expressed by the quantity of any
other commodity that costs the same amount of labour-time.
12
Such quantitative determination of
its relative value takes place at the source of its production by means of barter. When it steps into
circulation as money, its value is already given. In the last decades of the 17th century it had
already been shown that money is a commodity, but this step marks only the infancy of the
analysis. The difficulty lies, not in comprehending that money is a commodity, but in discovering
how, why, and by what means a commodity becomes money.
13
We have already seen, from the most elementary expression of value, x commodity A = y
commodity B, that the object in which the magnitude of the value of another object is
represented, appears to have the equivalent form independently of this relation, as a social
property given to it by Nature. We followed up this false appearance to its final establishment,
which is complete so soon as the universal equivalent form becomes identified with the bodily
form of a particular commodity, and thus crystallised into the money-form. What appears to
happen is, not that gold becomes money, in consequence of all other commodities expressing
their values in it, but, on the contrary, that all other commodities universally express their values
in gold, because it is money. The intermediate steps of the process vanish in the result and leave
no trace behind. Commodities find their own value already completely represented, without any
initiative on their part, in another commodity existing in company with them. These objects, gold
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and silver, just as they come out of the bowels of the earth, are forthwith the direct incarnation of
all human labour. Hence the magic of money. In the form of society now under consideration, the
behaviour of men in the social process of production is purely atomic. Hence their relations to
each other in production assume a material character independent of their control and conscious
individual action. These facts manifest themselves at first by products as a general rule taking the
form of commodities. We have seen how the progressive development of a society of
commodity-producers stamps one privileged commodity with the character of money. Hence the
riddle presented by money is but the riddle presented by commodities; only it now strikes us in its
most glaring form.
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