Book iv., ch. I.

[132] The distinction between currency and money is therefore not found in “Wealth of Nations.” Deceived by the apparent impartiality of Adam Smith, who knew his Hume and Steuart very well, honest Maclaren remarks: “The theory of the dependence of prices on the extent of the currency had not as yet, attracted attention; and Doctor Smith, like Mr. Locke (Locke undergoes a change in his view), considers metallic money nothing but a commodity.” Maclaren, l. c. p. 44.

[133] David Ricardo, “The High Price of Bullion, a Proof of the Depreciation of Bank-notes.” 4th edition, London, 1811. (The first edition appeared in 1809). Further, “Reply to Mr. Bosanquet’s Practical Observations on the Report of the Bullion Committee.” London, 1811.

[134] David Ricardo: “On the Principles of Political Economy, etc.” p. 77. “Their value [of metals] [like that of all other commodities], depends on the total quantity of labour necessary to obtain the metal, and to bring it to market.”

[135] 1 p. 77, 180, 181.

[136] Ricardo, l. c. p. 421. “The quantity of money that can be employed in a country must depend on its value: if gold alone were employed for the circulation of commodities, a quantity would be required, one fifteenth only of what would be necessary, if silver were made use of for the same purpose.” See also Ricardo’s: “Proposals for an Economical and Secure Currency,” London, 1816, p. 89, where he says: “The amount of notes in circulation depends on the amount required for the circulation of the country; which is regulated ... by the value of the standard [of money], the amount of payments, and the economy practised in effecting them.”

[137] Ricardo, “Principles of Political Economy”, p. 432.

[138] David Ricardo, “Reply to Mr. Bosanquet’s Practical Observations, etc.” p. 49. “That commodities would rise or fall in price, in proportion to the increase or diminution of money, _I assume as a fact which is incontrovertible_.”

[139] David Ricardo, “The High Price of Bullion,” etc. “Money would have the same value in all countries.” p. 4. In his Political Economy Ricardo modified this statement, but not in a way to affect what has been said here.

[140] l. c. p. 3-4.

[141] l. c., p. 4.

[142] Ricardo, l. c., p. 11-12.

[143] Ricardo, l. c., p. 14.

[144] l. c., p. 17.

[145] Ricardo, l. c., p. 74-75. “England, in consequence of a bad harvest, would come under the case of a country having been deprived of a part of its commodities, and, therefore, requiring a diminished amount of circulating medium. The currency which was before equal to her payments would now become superabundant and relatively cheap, in proportion ... of her diminished production; the exportation of this sum, therefore, would restore the value of her currency to the value of the currencies of other countries.” His confusion of money and commodity, and of money and coin borders on the ludicrous in the following passage: “If we can suppose that after an unfavorable harvest, when England has occasion for an unusual importation of corn, another nation is possessed of a superabundance of that article, but has no wants for any commodity whatever, it would unquestionably follow that such nation would not export its corn in exchange for commodities: _but neither would it export corn for money_, as that is a commodity which no nation ever wants absolutely, but relatively.” l. c., p. 75. Pushkin in his hero poem makes the father of his hero incapable of comprehending that commodities are money. But that money is a commodity, the Russians have understood from times of yore as is proven not only by the English corn imports in 1838-1842, but by the entire history of their commerce.

[146] Conf. Thomas Tooke, “History of Prices,” and James Wilson, “Capital, Currency and Banking.” (The latter work is a reprint of a series of articles which appeared in the London Economist in 1844, 1845 and 1847.)

[147] James Deacon Hume: “Letters on the Corn Laws.” London, 1834, p. 29-31. [Letter by H. B. T. on the Corn Laws and on the Rights of the Working Classes. Transl.]

[148] Thomas Tooke, “History of Prices,” etc. London, 1848, p. 110.

[149] Conf. W. Blake’s above quoted “Observations etc.”

[150] James Mill: “Elements of Political Economy.” [London, 1821, p. 95-101 passim. Transl.]

[151] A few months before the outbreak of the commercial crisis of 1857, a committee of the House of Commons was in session to inquire into the effect of the bank-laws of 1844 and 1845. Lord Overstone, the theoretical father of these laws, delivered himself of this boast in his testimony before the committee: “By strict and prompt adherence to the principles of the act of 1844, everything has passed off with regularity and ease; the monetary system is safe and unshaken, the prosperity of the country is undisputed, the public confidence in the wisdom of the act of 1844 is daily gaining strength; and if the committee wish for further practical illustration of the soundness of the principles on which it rests, or of the beneficial results which it has assured, the true and sufficient answer to the committee is, look around you; look at the present state of trade of the country, look at the contentment of the people; look at the wealth and prosperity which pervades every class of the community; and then, having done so, the committee may be fairly called upon to decide whether they will interfere with the continuance of an act under which these results have been developed.” Thus did Overstone blow his own horn on the fourteenth of July, 1857; on the twelfth of November of the same year the Ministry had to suspend on its own responsibility the wonderful law of 1844.

[152] Tooke was entirely ignorant of Steuart’s work, as may be seen from his “History of Prices for 1839-1847,” London, 1848. where he reviews the history of the theories of money.

[153] Tooke’s most important work besides the “History of Prices” which his co-worker Newmarch published in six volumes, is “An Inquiry into the Currency Principle, the Connection of the Currency with Prices” etc., 2nd edition, London, 1844. Wilson’s book we have already quoted. Finally there is to be mentioned John Fullarton’s “On the Regulation of Currencies,” 2d edition, London, 1845.

[154] “We ought to ... distinguish ... between gold ... as merchandise, _i. e._ as capital, and gold ... as currency” (Tooke, “An Inquiry into the Currency Principle, etc.” p. 10). “Gold and silver may be counted upon to realize on their arrival nearly the exact sum required to be provided ... gold and silver possess an infinite advantage over all other description of merchandize ... from the circumstance of being universally in use as money.... It is not in tea, coffee, sugar or indigo that debts, whether foreign or domestic, are usually contracted to be paid, but in coin; and the remittance, therefore, either in the identical coin designated, or in bullion which can be promptly turned into that coin through the mint or market of the country to which it is sent, must always afford to the remitter, the most certain, immediate, and accurate means of affecting this object, without risk of disappointment from the failure of demand or fluctuation of price.” (Fullerton, l. c. p. 132-133.) “Any other article (except gold or silver) might in quantity or kind be beyond the usual demand of the country to which it is sent.” (Tooke: “An Inquiry, etc.”)

[155] The transformation of money into capital we shall consider in the third chapter which treats of capital and forms the end of the first book.

[156] This introduction was first published in the Neue Zeit (see Translator’s Preface, p. 5) of March 7, 14 and 21, 1903, by Karl Kautsky, with the following explanation:

“This article has been found among the posthumous papers of Karl Marx. It is a fragmentary sketch of a treatise that was to have served as an introduction to his main work, which he had been writing for many years and whose outline was clearly formed in his mind. The manuscript is dated August 23, 1857.... As the idea is very often indicated only in fragmentary sentences, I have taken the liberty of introducing here and there changes in style, insertions of words, etc.... A mere reprint of the original would have made it unintelligible.... Not all the words in the manuscript are legible....

“Wherever there could be no doubt as to the necessity of corrections, I did so without indicating them in the text; in other cases I put all insertions in brackets. Wherever I am not certain as to whether I have deciphered a word correctly, I have put an interrogation point after it; other changes are specially noted. In all other respects this is an exact reprint of the original, whose fragmentary and incomplete passages serve to remind us only too painfully of the many treasures of thought which went down to the grave with Marx, treasures which would have sufficed for generations if Marx had not so anxiously avoided giving to the world any of his ideas until he had tested them repeatedly from every conceivable point of view and had given them a wording that would be incontrovertible. In spite of its fragmentary character it opens before us a wealth of new points of view.”

[157] The original reads “person.”

[158] The manuscript reads “production.”

[159] The manuscript reads “production.”

[160] The German text reads “instruktiv,” which I take to be a misprint of “instinktiv.” Translator.

[161] Compare this with foot-note 1, on p. 34 of Capital, Humboldt edition, New York:

“Truly comical is M. Bastiat, who imagines that the ancient Greeks and Romans lived by plunder alone. But when people plunder for centuries, there must always be something at hand for them to seize; the objects of plunder must be continually reproduced.” K. Kautsky.

[162] The English expression is used by Marx in his German original. Transl.

[163] Marx evidently has in mind here a passage in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (vol. 2, ch. 2) in which he speaks of the circulation of a country as consisting of two distinct parts: circulation between dealers and dealers, and that between dealers and consumers. The word dealer signifies here not only a merchant or shopkeeper, but also a producer. K. Kautsky.

[164] Here two words in the manuscript can not be deciphered. They look like “ausser sich” (“outside of itself”). K. Kautsky.

[165] Distribution (Verkehr) is used here in the sense of physical distribution of goods and not in sense of economic distribution of the shares of the products between the different factors of production. Translator.

[166] As the “notes” written down by Marx in the following eight paragraphs are extremely fragmentary, making translation in some cases impossible without a certain degree of interpretation, and as the original is not accessible in book-form, they are reproduced here in German for the benefit of the student who may feel interested in the original wording as it had been jotted down by Marx.

[167] Im Original ist zu lesen Va

[168] Im Original ist zu lesen egtl.

[169] The site of the “Times” building in London. K. K.

AUTHORS QUOTED IN ZUR KRITIK

Arbuthnot, 258.

Aristotle, 19, 41, 53, 78-79, 153, 154, 184.

Athenaeus, 87.

Attwood, 100.

Bailey, 84.

Barbon, 95.

Bastiat, 34.

Berkeley, Bischop, 32, 95-96, 155.

Bernier, 173.

Blake, 133, 250.

Blanc, Louis, 231.

Boisguillebert, 56, 59, 121, 133, 166, 168, 198.

Bosanquet, 124, 235, 242.

Bray, 106.

Brougham, 70.

Buchanan, 147.

Büsch, 231.

Carli, 205.

Castlereagh, Lord, 100.

Cato, 170.

Chevalier, 154, 215.

Clay, 258.

Cobbet, 123.

Cooper, 32.

Corbet, 124.

Darimont, 107.

Dodd, 141.

Forbonnais, 226.

Franklin, 62-3, 155, 226.

Fullarton, 260.

Galiani, 30, 65, 85, 111, 134.

Garnier, 87, 141.

Genovesi, 51, 164.

Gladstone, 73.

Gray, 103 sq.

Grim, 211.

Hodgskin, 55.

Horace, 178.

Hume, D., 219, 221 sq, 231.

Hume, J. D., 249.

Jakob, 141, 181.

Jovellanos, 61.

Julius, 231.

Körner, 212.

Law, 226, 231.

List, 34.

Locke, 91, 93 sq., 199, 219, 226, 233.

Lowndes, 94.

Luther, 174-5, 190.

McCulloch, 31, 57.

Maclaren, 82, 231, 233.

Macleod, 71, 193.

Malthus, 34.

Mandeville, Sir J., 154.

Mill, James, 123-4, 250 sqq.

Misselden, 165, 171, 174-5.

Montanari, 38.

Montesquieu, 219, 227.

Müller, 85.

Norman, 258.

Opdyke, 124.

Overstone, Lord, 241, 258.

Peel, Sir R., 73, 100, 241, 258.

Pereire, 120.

Peter Martyr, 210.

Petty, Sir W., 32, 56 sq., 165, 172-3.

Plato, 153.

Pliny, 177.

Proudhon, 61, 72, 103, 107.

Ricardo, 56, 69 sq., 71, 217, 231, 235, 250, 259.

Say, 34, 71, 123, 153, 233.

Senior, 178, 194.

Sismondi, 56, 77.

Smith, 34, 57, 61, 67-68, 80, 231 sq.

Spence, 123.

Stein, 21, 31-2.

Steuart, Sir James, 65 sq., 94 sq., 222, 227 sq., 260.

Storch, 152-3, 179.

Thompson, 106.

Tooke, 124, 247, 249, 260 sq.

Torrens, 58.

Urquhart, 89.

Ustariz, 61.

Wilson, 260.

Xenophon, 181, 184.

Young, 231.