Page:The International Socialist Review (1900-1918), Vol. 1, Issue 1.pdf/38

 definite and universal protection would defeat the object sought; fourth, being thus universally salable, and its production being in the hands of private individuals, each working for his own private interest regardless of what others are doing and regardless of the public requirements, its production is always carried on at a maximum, just as banks of issue, when free to do so, issue their notes to the utmost limits. Yet in spite of these striking features, which distinguish gold under free coinage from all other articles, Marx implies that gold miners regulate their output to correspond with the volume of commodities, so as to maintain a stable price level; that if they do keep on mining beyond the requirements of a stable price level, they are mining for use and not for profit. It is not because the production of gold can to a slight extent be controlled by individuals that makes it usable as money; it is rather in spite of that fact.

This is superficially true; but essentially it is utterly false and misleading. In every country a certain amount of gold is needed for the arts, for plate, ornaments and jewelry; some is also kept as hoards and reserves; all the rest circulates as money, and this money volume can in no way be increased, except within very narrow limits out of hoards and reserves, but by no means to correspond with the increase of commodities. So that it is perfectly correct, speaking broadly, to say, that substantially all the gold in a country enters into circulation, and this would be true in principle even though a much larger proportion were used in the arts than now. Just as there is a minimum standard of living at any one time and place, but not always and everywhere the same, which determines the value of labor power, so there is in every country a minimum quantity of gold needed for non-monetary purposes, out of which no increase of the circulating medium can be derived. The relative amount of such hoards differs in different countries. It is greater in India than in France, and greater in France than in England.

Gold metal stands in the same relation to gold money that products do to commodities. To say, therefore, that all the gold in a country does not circulate as money is analogous to saying that all the products of a country do not circulate as commodities. This is superficially true. But in substance it is false. A certain minimum of the products are consumed by the producers as utilities without ever becoming commodities, but everything above that, in short, the vast bulk of the products is thrown upon the market as commodities. No one demonstrates this so clearly as Marx. All his economic writings go to show that the prevailing system of production to-day is the production of com-