In economies where labour-time itself is not used as an intrinsic measure of value, and where, in any case, commodities exchange at prices of production, rather than exchange-values, this appears to pose a problem of determining how much labour-time a coin actually does represent. In reality, it presents no greater problem than determining how much labour-time a ¼ ounce gold coin represents. The determination, as with all exchange, throughout history, is resolved behind men's backs, via trial and error, and in the way described by Engels in his Supplement to Capital III. In the case of gold coins, where too many were in circulation, the value of the coin fell below that of its metal content, and they were withdrawn and melted down. With paper currencies, the value of the notes is devalued, and manifest in higher commodity prices.
“While the denomination of paper is based on gold or silver, the convertibility of the note, i.e., its exchangeability for gold or silver, remains an economic law regardless of what juridical law may say. For instance, a Prussian paper thaler, although legally inconvertible, would immediately depreciate if in everyday commerce it were worth less than a silver thaler, that is if it were not convertible in practice. The consistent advocates of inconvertible paper money in Britain, therefore, had recourse to the ideal standard of money. If the denominations of money, pound, shilling and so on, are names for a determinate amount of particles of value, of which sometimes more, sometimes less are either absorbed or lost by a commodity when it is exchanged for other commodities, then the value of an English £5 note, for instance, is just as little affected by its relation to gold as by its relation to iron and cotton. Since its designation would no longer equate the bank-note in theory to a determinate quantity of gold or of any other commodity, its very concept would preclude the demand for its convertibility, that is for its equation in practice with a determinate quantity of a specific thing.” ( p 83)
And, that is precisely what Nixon was confronted with in 1971.
Marx then examines the ideas of John Gray, later plagiarised by Proudhon. Superficially, the ideas set out by Gray appear similar to those set out by Marx in The Critique of the Gotha Programme. There, Marx says,
“the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labour. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labour time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labour (after deducting his labour for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labour cost. The same amount of labour which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.”
Gray says,
“a national central bank should ascertain through its branches the labour-time expended in the production of various commodities. In exchange for the commodity, the producer would receive an official certificate of its value, i.e., a receipt for as much labour-time as his commodity contains, and this bank-note of one labour week, one labour day, one labour hour, etc., would serve at the same time as an order to the bank to hand over an equivalent in any of the other commodities stored in its warehouses.” (p 83-4)
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