Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/202

Rh because the different hands have already clasped each other. The rapidity with which money circulates as a means of payment thus shows that individuals have been drawn into the process of circulation much deeper than would be indicated by the same rapidity of the circulation of money as coin or as a means of purchase.

The sum total of prices made up by all the purchases and sales taking place at the same time, and, therefore, side by side, constitutes the limit for the substitution of the volume of coin by the rapidity of its circulation. If the payments that are to be made simultaneously are concentrated at one place—which naturally arises at first at points where the circulation of commodities is largest—the payments balance each other as negative and positive quantities: A is under obligations to pay B, while he has to be paid by C, etc. The quantity of money required as a means of payment will, therefore, be determined not by the total amount of payments which have to be made simultaneously, but by the greater or less concentration of the same and by the magnitude of the balance remaining after their mutual neutralization as negative and positive quantities. Special arrangements are made for settlements of this kind even where the credit system is not developed at all, as was the case e. g. in ancient Rome. The consideration of these arrangements, however, as well as that of the general time limits of payment, which are everywhere established among certain elements in the community, does not belong here. We may add that the specific influence which these time settlements exert on the