Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/117

Rh into gold—actually turn into gold through the sale C—M, but gold, which as a measure of value had been only ideal money and in fact figured merely as a money name of commodities—is now turned into actual money by the same process. Just as gold became the ideal universal equivalent, because all commodities measured their values by it, so does it now become the absolutely alienable commodity, real money, because it is the product of the universal alienation of commodities for it—and the sale C—M is the process by means of which that universal alienation takes place. But gold becomes real money only through sale, because the exchange values of commodities were already ideal gold in their prices.

In the sale C—M, as well as in the purchase M—C, two commodities, entities of exchange value and usevalue, confront each other, but the exchange value of the commodity exists only ideally as price; while as regards gold, although it is really a use-value, its