Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/80

Rh money are treated of which directly grow out of the exchange of commodities; the forms which belong to a higher stage of production, as e. g., credit money will not be discussed here. For the sake of simplicity gold is assumed throughout as the money commodity.

The first process of circulation constitutes, so to say, the theoretical preparatory process to actual circulation. To begin with, commodities which are use-values by nature, acquire a form in which they appear in idea to each other as exchange values, as definite quantities of incorporated universal' labor-time. The first necessary step in this process is, as we have seen, the setting apart by the commodities of a specific commodity, say gold, as the direct incarnation of universal labor-time, or the universal equivalent. Let us go back for a moment to the form in which commodities turn gold into money.

1 ton of iron = 2 ounces of gold 1 quarter of wheat = 1 ounce of gold 1 hundred weight of Mocca coffee = 1-4¼ [sic] ounce of gold 1 hundred weight of potash = ½ ounce of gold 1 ton of Brazil timber =1½ ounces of gold Y commodities = X ounces of gold

In the above series of equations iron, wheat, coffee, potash, etc. appear to each other as embodiments of homogeneous labor, namely, as labor materialized in money, from which all the peculiarities of the different kinds of concrete labor represented in the different use-values are completely eliminated. As value they are all