Page:The International Socialist Review (1900-1918), Vol. 1, Issue 1.pdf/36

36 great Marxian economist, following his master, rejects bimetallism. He ends by recommending that gold be demonetized the world over, and that silver be used as exclusive currency. This is the proposition of a hard-headed, matter of fact evolutionist, who pities bimetallists as deluded dreamers.

Against this view it may here be observed that the products bartered for gold at the mines do not afterwards come upon the market as commodities, but pass over into use, and are consumed. Again, products before they are bartered have a price; in fact they are no longer products, they are already commodities, which means that their counterpart, money, is already in existence. Marx says that barter comes before price and fixes price. Barter does come before price in one sense; it exists before the introduction of money. Money is introduced by fixing upon unit of price. Thereupon a price at once attaches to all products offered for exchange or sale. From now on the price comes before barter; in fact, primitive barter is abolished and price barter takes its place. All barter is conducted with reference to the prices of the commodities bartered. A commodity bartered for gold at the mines brings just as much gold as if sold for a price in money, no more and no less. It is price that fixes barter value, not barter value that fixes price. Gold itself has a price expressed in units of valuation.

Mr. Hyndman sees this: "So completely has the idea of valuation apart from money disappeared that insensibly those who wish to obtain other articles in place of their own, estimate the value of their possessions which they propose to transfer, not with reference to the need which they have of the other articles they desire to possess in place of these, but with regard to the price that either would realize if brought into the open market. An exchange of commodities may be directly effected between individuals in this way; but still in spite of all they can do, the vision of the price current is ever before them." (Hyndman, Economics of Socialism, p. 1 14.)

This is true on the assumption made by Marx that the price level is stable. It is not the conclusion that we object to but the assumption on which it is based.

This claim is closely interwoven with the question of interna-