MONEY

Grey River Argus, 15 August 1934, Page 7

MONEY

Writes a Stockton correspondent: A speaker in the House the other day said: Gold never was money, nor never will be money. What is money? Money is the material expression of the value form of commodities, just as a foot rule is a material expression of the lineal form of natural objects. Paper money is a token representing gold in its function as a means of circulation. It expresses symbolically the value of commodities, as the equivalent quantity of gold expresses ideally the value of commodities. The true and the false. Gold has become money in consequence of all other commodities expressing their value in gold. The false appearance* of things is that all other commodities express their value in gold, because gold is money. The money form of gold is only a reflex in one commodity of the value relations of all commodities. The fact that money can, in certain other relations, be replaced by symbols or itself (notes, cheques, etc.), leads t.o the mistaken idea that money is itself a symbol. Tt is a commodity like the rest, and its value is determined by the labour-time necessary for its production, and is expressed by tin* quantity of any other commodity that costs the same amount of labour time. And this quantitative determination »s made where the money commodity is produced, when it is bartered against other commodities. The first function of money is to be a universal measure of value. Money does not render commodities commensurable. As materialised labour, they are commensurable, and therefore their value can thus be measured. The expression of the value of a commodity in terms of gold is its price. Price is the mime.* form or money name of the labour materialised in a commodity. Money, therefore, has no price. And price 1s a purely ideal or mental, not a real bodily form. When money leaves the home sphere of circulation, it is extradited, it loses all local forms oT standard prices, coin, etc., and is simply In its general form —bullion. It is again and finally the social incarnation of human labour in the abstract. Yes, gold is money all right, in spite of the utterance of the M.P. And the only real money known. All other representatives of gold are only allowed to circulate as money because they are representatives only of gold. The first and most important, function of money is the measure of value. Lt is absurd to expect a piece of paper in the shape of a note to function as a measure of value, i.e., of social labour. Value is not created in exchange but in production. Value is only realized by exchange.