A Companion to Marx's Capital. David Harvey
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commodities around.
There is a tension, a contradiction, between these two functions. As a measure of value, for example, gold looks very good. It is permanent and can be stored forever; one can assay its qualities; one can know and control its concrete conditions of production and circulation. So gold is great as a measure of value. But imagine if every time you went for coffee, you had to use a grain of gold to purchase it. This is a very inefficient form of money from the standpoint of the circulation of myriad small quantities of commodities. Imagine everyone with a little pouch with grains of gold in it—what if somebody sneezed while counting out the grains? Gold is an inefficient means of circulation, even as it is excellent as a measure of value.
So Marx contrasts money as a measure of value (section 1) and money as a means or medium of circulation (section 2). At the end of the day, though, there is only one kind of money (section 3). And the resolution of that tension between money as an effective measure of value and money as an efficient means of circulation is partially given by the possibility, or—and this is controversial—the necessity, of another form of circulation, which is the existence of credit moneys. The consequent relation between debtors and creditors opens up not only the possibility but also the necessity for another form of circulation, that of capital. In other words, what emerges in this chapter is the possibility for the concept, as well as the fact, of capital. In the same way that the possibility of money crystallized out of processes of exchange, so the possibility of capital crystallizes out of the contradiction between money as the measure of value and money as the means of circulation. This is the big story in this long chapter. If you keep it steadily in mind, a lot of the intricate and sometimes confusing details fall more easily into place.
Section 1: The Measure of Values
There is a distinction between “money” and “the money commodity.” To consolidate his earlier argument—namely, that value is not in itself materially measurable but needs, rather, a representation to regulate exchanges—Marx begins by assuming gold to be the singular money commodity. This is “the necessary form of appearance of the measure of value which is immanent in commodities, namely labour-time” (188). Value gets expressed (or perhaps we should say “resides”) in the relationship between the money commodity as “a form of appearance” of value and all the commodities that exchange with it. The value of commodities is unrecognizable and unknowable without its form of appearance.
This poses, however, some complications—and reveals some contradictions—that require close scrutiny. Marx focuses first on how prices get attached to commodities. Prices are, he says, imaginary, or ideal (meaning a product of thought or logical principle, as opposed to “real” or empirically derived conclusions) (189–90). He’s referring to the fact that when I make a commodity, I have no idea what its value is before I take it to market. I go to the market with some imaginary, ideal notion of its value. So I hang a price tag on it. This tells the potential purchaser what I think the value of my commodity should be. I have no idea whether I’ll get that price for it, though, because I can have no prior idea of what its value is “on the market”:
In its function as measure of value, money therefore serves only in an imaginary or ideal capacity. This circumstance has given rise to the wildest theories. But, although the money that performs the functions of a measure of value is only imaginary, the price depends entirely on the actual substance that is money. (190)
A relationship arises between the imaginary, ideal prices and the prices actually received in the marketplace. The received price should, “ideally,” indicate true value, but it is only going to be the appearance, a representation—and an imperfect one, at that—of value.
We would obviously prefer the quantitative representation of value to be a stable standard of measurement. Gold is a specific commodity, though; its value is given by the socially necessary labor-time embodied in it, and this is not, as we have seen, constant. Fluctuations in the concrete conditions of production affect the value of gold (or any other money commodity). Since, however, such changes affect “all commodities simultaneously,” then “other things being equal … the mutual relations between their values [are] unaltered, although those values are now all expressed in higher or lower gold-prices than before” (191–3, emphasis added).
Marx also introduces silver as a potential alternative money commodity in order to make a simple point: although gold seems to be a solid standard of value for comparing the relative values of all other commodities, it is insecure when it comes to establishing the absolute value (192–3). If, as in the gold rush of 1848, an influx of gold floods the market, then suddenly the value of gold—the representative measure of socially necessary labor-time—declines, and all the commodity prices have to adjust upward (hence the grand inflation in the sixteenth century when the Spaniards brought in gold from Latin America). We are always dealing with the money commodity as something that has a concrete use-value, and the conditions of its own production have an impact on the way value is represented. In recent years, gold prices have been yo-yoing all over the place (for reasons we will come to shortly). What Marx wants to emphasize here is that even though any money commodity makes for a shifting measure of value, its inconstancy makes no difference to the relative values of the commodities being exchanged in the marketplace (192–3, see also 146).
Marx goes on to observe that, “as measure of value, and as standard of price, money performs two quite different functions.” Here, a sub-duality within the theory of money emerges, not to be confused with the grand distinction between money as a measure of value and as a medium of circulation. The money commodity “is the measure of value as the social incarnation of human labour”—this is the “ideal” representation—but it is also “the standard of price as a quantity of metal with a fixed weight.” It is the latter aspect that allows us to say that this commodity is really “worth” so many ounces of gold. This quantity, the weight of gold, is what we have in mind before, and hopefully in hand after, the exchange of the commodity. “For various reasons,” though—and these turn out to be historical reasons—“the money-names of the metal weights are gradually separated from their original weight-names” (192–3).
Now, there is no explicit theory of the state in Capital, but if you trace its many appearances throughout the text, it becomes clear that the state performs essential functions within a capitalist system of production (we have already tacitly invoked this in imagining the institutions of private property and a properly functioning market in chapter 2). One of the state’s most important functions, as we will see, has to do with organizing the monetary system, regulating the money-names and keeping the monetary system effective and stable.
These historical processes have made the separation of the money-name from the weight-name into a fixed popular custom. Since the standard of money is on the one hand purely conventional, while on the other hand it must possess universal validity, it is in the end regulated by law. (194)
The money-name is, however, a fetish-construct. “The name of a thing is entirely external to its nature. I know nothing of a man if I merely know his name is Jacob. In the same way, every trace of the money-relation disappears in the money-names pound, thaler, franc, ducat, etc.” That is, the relationship to socially necessary labor-time is further disguised by these money-names. “Price,” Marx concludes, “is the money-name of the labour objectified in a commodity” (195). The money-name (pounds, ducats) is not the same as the money commodity (gold), and its relation to value as socially necessary labor-time becomes ever more opaque; but the definition of price as the money-name of the labor embodied in a commodity is important to remember.
Marx goes on to make two more important observations. The possibility exists, he writes, “of a quantitative incongruity between price and magnitude of value, i.e. the possibility that the price may diverge from the magnitude of value,” and this possibility belongs inherently to the price-form itself. “This is not a defect, but, on the contrary, it makes this form the adequate one for a mode of production whose laws can only assert themselves as blindly operating averages between constant irregularities” (196). What he is saying here is this: if I take my commodity to market and hang a price (a money-name or proposed representation of value) on it, you bring a similar commodity to market and hang your price on it, somebody brings another and