Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/176

Rh particular natural wealth into universal social wealth. Instead of change of matter, change of form becomes its own purpose. From a mere form of the movement exchange value becomes its substance. Commodity is preserved as wealth, as commodity, only in so far as it keeps within the sphere of circulation, and it keeps in that fluent state only in so far as it solidifies in the form of silver and gold. It remains in the stream of circulation as its crystal. At the same time gold and silver themselves become money only in so far as they do not play the part of mediums of circulation. As non-mediums of circulation they become money. The withdrawal of a commodity from circulation in the form of gold is therefore the only means of keeping it constantly within the sphere of circulation.

The owner of commodities can receive money from circulation only in return for a commodity which he gives to it. Constant selling, continual throwing of commodities into circulation is, therefore, the first condition of hoarding from the standpoint of the circulation of commodities. On the other hand, money as a medium of circulation constantly disappears in the very process of circulation by being realized all the time in use-values and becoming dissolved in fleeting pleasures. It must, therefore, be taken out of the all-consuming stream of circulation or the commodity must be kept up in its first metamorphosis, so that money is prevented from performing its function of a means of purchase. The commodity owner who has now become a hoarder, must sell as much as possible and buy as little as possible, as old Cato had taught: "patrem familias vendacem, non