Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/242

Rh circumstance, that Ricardo and his adherents, who held money to be merely a token of value, are called bullionists, is due not only to the name of that committee, but also to the nature of their theory. In his work on political economy, Ricardo repeated and developed further the same views, but nowhere has he investigated the nature of money as such, as he had done in the case of exchange value, profit, rent, etc.

To begin with, Ricardo determines the value of gold and silver, like that of all other commodities, by the quantity of labor-time embodied in them. By means of them, as commodities of a given value, the values of all other commodities are measured. The volume of the circulating medium in a country is determined by the value of the unit of measure of money on the one hand, and by the sum total of the exchange values of commodities, on the other. This quantity is modified by economy in the method of payment. Since the quantity of money,