Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/156

Rh continually circulates, actually forms only a connecting link between the metamorphoses of commodities and constitutes but their transitory money form; furthermore, that it realizes the price of one set of commodities only in order to realize that of another, but in no case does it constitute a stable form of exchange value or appear itself as a commodity in a state of rest. The reality which the exchange value of commodities acquires in the process and which is represented by gold in its circulation, is the reality of an electric spark. Although real gold, it plays the part of fictitious gold, and can, therefore, be replaced in this function by a token of itself.

The token of value, say paper, which plays the part of coin, is the token of a quantity of gold expressed in its currency name, i. e., it is a gold token. Just as a certain quantity of gold does not in itself express a value ratio, so is that true of the token which takes its place. In so far as a certain quantity of gold, as embodied labor-time, has a value of a certain magnitude, the gold token represents value. But the magnitude of the value which it represents depends all the time on the value of the quantity of gold for which it stands. As regards commodities the token of value expresses the reality of their price, it is signum pretii and sign of their value only because their value is expressed in their price. In the process C—M—C, in so far as it represents the dynamic unity or direct alternation of the two metamorphoses—and that is the aspect it assumes in the sphere of circulation in which the token of value discharges its function—the exchange value of commodities acquires in