Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/174

Rh coin and the separate parts of the circulating mass of coins appear now in one form, now in another, constantly changing. This first transformation of the medium of circulation into money represents, therefore, but a technical aspect of money circulation.

The primitive form of wealth is that of a surplus or superabundance, i. e., that part of the products which are not immediately required as use-values, or the possession of such products whose use-value falls outside the sphere of mere necessaries. When considering the transition of commodity into money we saw that this surplus or superabundance of products constitutes the proper sphere of exchange at a low stage of development of production. Superfluous products become exchangeable products or commodities. The adequate form of this surplus is gold and silver, the first form in which wealth as abstract social wealth is preserved. Commodities can not only be stored up in the form of gold and silver, i. e., in the substance of money, but gold and