As Marx says, in Theories of Surplus Value, therefore, every commodity is money. Every commodity represents a given quantity of social-labour-time, and so has a claim on an equal amount of social labour. The price of every commodity, can also be given in terms of a quantity of some other commodity, for this very reason. So, in the example above, a metre of cloth can be given a price of 1.15 litres of wine. What Marx then demonstrates is that some commodities tend to be more frequently traded, and the social values of these commodities, i.e. the labour-time required for their production tends to be better known, also. As Engels puts it,
“But how, in this barter on the basis of the quantity of labour, was the latter to be calculated, even if only indirectly and relatively, for products requiring a longer labour, interrupted at regular intervals, and uncertain in yield — grain or cattle, for example? And among people, to boot, who could not calculate? Obviously, only by means of a lengthy process of zigzag approximation, often feeling the way here and there in the dark, and, as is usual, learning only through mistakes. But each one's necessity for covering his own outlay on the whole always helped to return to the right direction; and the small number of kinds of articles in circulation, as well as the often century-long stable nature of their production, facilitated the attaining of this goal. And that it by no means took so long for the relative amount of value of these products to be fixed fairly closely is already proved by the fact that cattle, the commodity for which this appears to be most difficult because of the long time of production of the individual head, became the first rather generally accepted money commodity. To accomplish this, the value of cattle, its exchange ratio to a large number of other commodities, must already have attained a relatively unusual stabilization, acknowledged without contradiction in the territories of many tribes. And the people of that time were certainly clever enough — both the cattlebreeders and their customers — not to give away the labour-time expended by them without an equivalent in barter.”
(Supplement To Capital III, The Law of Value)
Initially, there are several of these regularly traded commodities, which act as the measure of the value of all other commodities, what Marx describes as The Equivalent Form of Value, but, as Engels describes, here, a single money commodity emerges. It becomes the Universal Equivalent Form of Value. Now, as Marx says, not only has value become separated from use value, as exchange-value, but exchange-value itself, now, exists separated from the commodity itself. The money commodity can only act as money, in so far as it does not act as commodity, or to put it another way, you cannot have your cow and eat it. If cattle are to be used as money, and so not only to provide the indirect measure of value, but also as the basis of a currency, the thing that can be universally exchanged for any other commodity, you cannot use those cattle as cattle to be eaten.
If I exchange a metre of linen for a litre of wine, I do so to consume the wine, just as the buyer of my linen does so to use it to make clothes, i.e. to consume it, but the function of a money commodity is not to be consumed, but to be again used to buy some other commodity. It must continue in circulation, not be taken out of circulation to be consumed. That does not mean that cattle cannot continue to be commodities too, and consumed. On the contrary, the requirement for a money commodity is that it is and remains also a commodity – which is why Bitcoin is not money – but, those cattle that are commodities, and consumed, cannot themselves also act as money. The same is true with, say, gold. Gold is a commodity. It is used for jewellery and other purposes. It has use value, which is what enables it to be a commodity, and it has value, because it requires social labour for its production. It is this which enables it, as with cattle, to be compared to the value of other commodities, and to express their value indirectly as an exchange value, or money price. But, the gold that acts as money and currency, cannot simultaneously act as commodity, to be used in jewellery and so on. To act as money, it has to give up that function as commodity, and function solely as money, to be circulated in exchange for other commodities. It becomes the general commodity. And, now, the labour required to produce gold as this general commodity, becomes the proxy for general social labour too. It becomes the proxy for average social labour.
And, this goes to the heart of what money is, as opposed to the money commodity. Money is general social labour-time, value completely alienated from use value, universal labour. It is the equivalent of the total value of commodities to be circulated, the equivalent of the total social labour-time embodied within those commodities. A money commodity is simply the physical embodiment of that money, of that total social labour-time, within the physical body of a given commodity. It is as Marx describes it, exchange-value incarnate, or that exchange value divorced from use value, given material form. The obvious manifestation of that is that if silver first acts as the money commodity, but is then replaced by gold, much less gold is required to fulfil this function than silver. The reason for that is that the value of gold is much higher than that of silver. Much less gold is required to represent a given amount of social labour-time/money, than is silver.
If we take gold as such a money commodity, then a gram of gold forms the basis for determining the exchange-value, money price of every commodity. It does this because the gram of gold contains a given quantity of labour, and this gold producing labour now acts as the proxy for abstract social labour itself. It is against the labour contained in a gram of gold that all other labour, used to produce other commodities, is now compared and measured. The gram of gold might be given the name £, so that the price of every commodity can now be given as x amount of £'s, depending upon how many grams of gold they are equal to.
But, it is not necessary for the money commodity itself to be present in determining the price of any commodity. The money commodity, here, only acts as unit of account. To determine that a litre of wine is equal to 1 gram of gold, has a price of £1, I do not need to physically have the 1 gram of gold, its only necessary to know that a gram of gold is equal in value, represents an equal amount of social labour-time, as a litre of wine. The prices of every other commodity can be determined in the same way, and consequently, if I know that a litre of wine has a price of £1, and a kilo of iron has a price of £2, I also know that a kilo of iron has the same value, exchanges for, 2 litres of wine. This one money commodity now not only enables the prices of every commodity to be equated to it, but also establishes the proportional relations of all commodities one to another through it.
It was not necessary, as the idealist view would have it, for society to come up with the idea of money as a convenient means of measuring values, and facilitating trade, because the exchange of commodities itself inevitably established the existence of a money commodity to perform this function.
Once a money commodity is established, this fact that it does not need to be physically present, in order to measure the value of commodities, also means, so long as there is trust between those engaged in trade, a token can take its place. All sorts of tokens have been used for this purpose, each of them representing a quantity of the money commodity that could be claimed by it. In the absence of trust/credit a seller will require payment in the money commodity, because, that way, they know that what they receive is an equal amount of value to what they have sold. That is why a money commodity, arises in the first place. It is also why, in times that money tokens cease to be trusted, for example, in times of hyperinflation, sellers turn again to a requirement for some actual commodity, whose value will be retained, for example gold.
Gold and silver perform this function as money commodity between communities, particularly as trade expands on a wider scale. Another reason for this is that tokens for the money commodity, in one place, may not be accepted as such elsewhere. This is an advantage for a large state, such as the Roman state, because it could produce coins which were accepted throughout its Empire. The only institution capable of enforcing acceptance of money tokens is the state itself. The need to have confidence that what is being given in exchange is an actual equivalent amount of value, means that the first coins are themselves made of precious metals. The coin is minted as a given weight of such metal, and so representing a given amount of value.
Each coin can then exchange for a commodity of an equal amount of value. If each coin is used only once, then the number of coins required in circulation is equal to the total value of commodities to be circulated divided by the value of the coin. In other words, if the total value of commodities is 100,000 hours, and a coin has a value of 10 hours, 10,000 coins must be minted to act as currency. However, as currency, the coin, unlike a commodity, does not leave circulation to be consumed, but remains in circulation after each transaction. In a year, a coin might take part in 10 transactions, so that, in practice, only 1,000 coins need to be minted.
However, this very fact that the coin takes part in numerous transactions also means that just from normal usage, it gets worn, as it passes from hand to hand. But also, because the coin is comprised of precious metal, each person that possesses it will be tempted to shave bits off it, and to accumulate such shavings that can later be sold as a quantity of gold, silver, copper etc. A 1 gram gold coin, after a time, might actually contain only 0.75 grams of gold, so that, in terms of the actual value of its material content, it is equal to only 7.5 hours of labour rather than the 10 hours of a full weight coin. Yet, what was seen was that these coins, as tokens, continued to circulate as though they were full weight, i.e. as though they still contained 1 gram of gold.
As Marx says, although the coins were themselves comprised of the money commodity, say gold, only 75% of the coin was money commodity, and 25% of it was already just token, containing, in fact, no value at all. This was not surprising, because, for example, when cattle acted as the money commodity, it was not necessary to make all payments, and conduct transactions, in actual cattle. A strip of leather, for example, might act as money token, representing 1 cow. Its clear that the strip of leather is not a cow, and does not have the same value as a cow, and yet is accepted as a representative of it. A gold coin that purports to represent the value of 1 gram of gold does not itself have to contain 1 gram of gold, either, to perform that function.
No comments:
Post a Comment