Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/249

Rh wealth." Money circulates at a value corresponding to its real value or to its cost of production, i. e. it has the same value in all countries. That being the case, "there could be no temptation offered to either for their importation or exportation." There would thus be established a balance of currencies between the different countries. The normal level of a national currency is now expressed in terms of an international balance of currencies, which practically amounts to the statement that nationality does not change anything in a universal economic law. We have reached again the same fatal point as before. How is the normal level disturbed? Or, speaking in terms of the new terminology, how is the international balance of currencies disturbed? Or, how does money cease to have the same value in all countries? Or, finally, how does it cease to pass at its own value in every country? We have seen that the normal level was disturbed by an increase or decrease of the volume of money in circulation while the total value of commodities remained the same; or, because the quantity of money in circulation remained the same while the exchange values of commodities rose or fell. In the same manner, the international level, determined by the value of the metal itself, is disturbed by an increase in the quantity of gold in a country brought