Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/218

Rh Finally, the susceptibility of gold and silver of being turned from coin into bullion, from bullion into articles of luxury and vice versa, i. e. the advantage they possess as against other commodities in not being tied down to a definite, exclusive form in which they can be used, makes them the natural material of money, which must constantly change from one form to another.

Nature no more produces money than it does bankers or discount rates. But since the capitalist system of production requires the crystallization of wealth as a fetich in the form of a single article, gold and silver appear as its appropriate incarnation. Gold and silver are not money by nature, but money is by nature gold and silver. In the first place, the silver or gold money crystal is not only the product of the process of circulation, but in fact its only final product. In the second place, gold and silver are ready and direct products of nature, not distinguished by any difference of form. The universal product of the social process or the social process itself as a product is a peculiar natural product, a metal hidden in the bowels of the earth and extracted therefrom.

We have seen that gold and silver are unable to fulfill