Page:Landmarks of Scientific Socialism-Anti-Duehring-Engels-Lewis-1907.djvu/226

 it, Herr Duehring, Capital must express itself in gold.

Marx further examines the process by which money is transformed into capital and discovers that the form in which money circulates as capital is the inversion of the form in which it circulates as the universal equivalent. The individual owner of commodities sells to buy, he sells what he does not need, and buys with the money thus obtained what he does need. The budding capitalist buys on the contrary what he does not want himself, he buys to sell, and to sell for a higher money value than he put into the business, he makes a money profit, and this profit Marx calls surplus value.

What is the origin of this surplus value? Either the buyer buys goods below their value or the seller sells them above their value. In both cases gain and loss would balance one another, since every buyer is also a seller. It can also not arise from extortion, for extortion might enrich one at the expense of the other but it could not increase the total sum of money neither could it increase the amount of commodities in circulation. "The entire capitalist class of a country cannot overreach itself."

Now, we find that the totality of the capitalist class in every country grows richer before our very eyes, by the process of selling dearer than it bought, by appropriating surplus value. So we are just at the beginning of the discussion. Where does this surplus value come from? This question has to be answered on purely economic grounds to the exclusion of all cheating, and all invasion of force. How is it possible to keep selling dearer than one buys under the assumption that equal values are always exchanged for equal values?

The solution of this problem is the crowning glory of the work of Marx. He sheds clear daylight in economic