The commodity is a use value that also has exchange-value, but this exchange-value is only real if it is actually exchanged for gold. For gold as money – distinguished, here, from gold as commodity (jewellery, etc.) - it not only has exchange-value, but is exchange-value incarnate. Its use value is only to act as money, to be measure of value/unit of account, as well as medium of exchange. Gold exists still as commodity, used in jewellery and so on, but, insofar as it does, this gold is not money. Money is only that gold which represents the equivalent form of value of all other commodities, and it is only that gold, coined and thrown into circulation, that acts as money in circulation, currency. It must disown all other use value, in order to represent all other use values. Its use value, as money, is solely to act as universal equivalent, exchange-value. As will be seen, if gold, as money, exists in excess it is removed from circulation, converted into bullion, and exported or melted down, and becomes commodity. Conversely, if not enough is in circulation, more is minted.
Marx quotes Galiani.
““There are two kinds of money, nominal and real, and it can be used in two distinct ways, to measure the value of things and to buy them. Nominal money is as suitable for valuing things as is real money and it may be even better. Money is also used for buying the things which have been valued.... Prices and contracts are calculated in nominal money and are executed in real money” (Galiani, op. cit., p. 112 et seq.].” (Note *, p 89)
The distinction between nominal and real money is the basis of the contradiction between money as measure of value, and as medium of exchange. It is the reflection of the contradiction within the commodity itself, as being both use value and exchange-value, a contradiction which does not exist for the product. The value of the commodity, as with the product, is determined by the labour-time required for its production, but, whether it is a use-value is a completely different question. As Marx says, in The Grundrisse, use value is determined by a completely different yardstick.
“Here a great confusion: (1) This identity of supply, so that it is a demand measured by its own amount, is true only to the extent that it is exchange value = to a certain amount of objectified labour. To that extent it is the measure of its own demand -- as far as value is concerned. But, as such a value, it first has to be realized through the exchange for money, and as object of exchange for money it depends (2) on its use value, but as use value it depends on the mass of needs present for it, the demand for it. But as use value it is absolutely not measured by the labour time objectified in it, but rather a measuring rod is applied to it which lies outside its nature as exchange value.”
(Grundrisse, p 412)
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