The most important point to emerge from Marx's theory of money
is the idea that money is a form of value. The difficulty with
this idea is that we are more familiar with money itself than
with value in other forms. But
value does appear in
forms other than money. For example, the balance sheet of a
capitalist firm estimates the value of goods in process and of
fixed capital which has not yet been depreciated, as well as the
value of inventories of finished commodities awaiting sale. Each
of these aggregations of commodities has a value, usually
expressed as the equivalent of a certain amount of money, but it
is clear that neither goods in process nor fixed capital is
money. Marx views the value of commodities in this sense as
analytically prior to money; money can be explained according to
Marx only on the basis of an understanding of the value of
commodities.
Marx follows Smith in regarding value as the property of
exchangeability of commodities. In a society where exchange is
common, products come to have a dual character as use values and
as values. They have two powers: first, to satisfy particular
human needs and wants; and second, to exchange for other
products. This second power can be thought of quantitatively, as
an amount of exchangeability or command over other commodities.
The classical economists viewed value as a real, though socially
determined, entity, with its own laws of conservation and
motion. Value in this sense bears the same relation to
commodities as mass bears to physical objects. It is not
surprising that in societies where exchange is widespread value
takes on an independent form as money, as an expression of
general exchangeability.
Value is a central social reality for people; they constantly
think and talk about it directly or indirectly; they want some
way to transfer it directly among themselves, separate from
particular commodities.
This is what we mean by "money." It is the social expression of
value separated from the concrete particularity of any use
value. With this emergence of money as the social expression of
value, money stands, in opposition to commodities, as the
abstract always stands in opposition to the particular. We will
see value in two forms: as particular commodities, and as money.
It is crucial to recognize that this development is latent in
the commodity form itself. Insofar as commodity relations are
well developed, so that exchange of products is common and
people are forced to consider the value of products separately
from their use values, the money form of value will also be
present. There is no reason to think of the commodity form
emerging historically before the money form.
However it is seen, it is clear that we still can't do anything
without this little thing called "money" and probably never will.
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