[102] In the following passage Xenophon develops money in its specific forms of money and hoard: “ἐν μόνω τούτῳ ὦν ἐγω οἴδα ἔργων οὐδὲ φθονεῖ οὐδεις τοῖς ἐπισκευαζομένοις ... ἀργυρῖτις δὲ ὅσω ἄν πλείων φαίνηται, καὶ ἀργύριον πλεῖον γίγνηται, τοσούτῳ πλείονες ἐπί τὸ ἔργον τοῦτο ἔρχονται ... καὶ γὰρ δὴ ἔπιπλα μὲν ἐπειδὰν ἰκανά τις κτήσηται τῇ οἰκίᾳ, οὐ μάλα ἔἱτι προσωνοῦνται· ἀργύριον δὲ οὐδείς πω οὔτω πολὺ ἐκτήσατο ὥστε μὴ ἔτι προσθεῖσθαι, ἀλλ ‘ἤν τισι γένηται παμπληθὲς, τὸ περιττεῦον κατορύττοντες οὐδὲν ἥττον ἥδονται ἥ χρώμενοι αὐτᾠ· καὶ μὲν ὅταν γε εὗ πράττωσιν αἰ πόλεις ἰσχυρῶς, οἰ ἄνθρωποι ἀργυρίου δέονται. Οἰ μὲν γὰρ ἄνδρες ἀμφι ὅπλα τε καλὰ καὶ ἵππους ἀγαρθοὺς καὶ οἰκίας καὶ κατασκευὰς μεγαλοπρεπεῖς βοὐλονται δαπανᾶν, αἰδὲ γυναῖκες εἰς ἐσθῆτα πολυτελῆ καὶ χρυσοῦν κόσμον τρέπονται· ὅταν δε αὔ νοσήσωσι πόλεις ἠ ἀφορίαις καρπῶν ῆ πολέμω ἔτι καὶ πολὺ μἄλλον τῆς γῆς ἀρυοῦ γιγνομενης καὶ εἰς ἐπιτήδεια καὶ εἰς ἐπικουροὺς νομίσματος δέονται.” (Xen. de Vectigalibus, c. IV.) (“Of all operations with which I am acquainted, this is the only one in which no sort of jealousy is felt at a further development of the industry ... the larger the quantity of ore discovered and the greater the amount of silver extracted, the greater the number of persons ready to engage in the operation.... No one when he has got sufficient furniture for his house dreams of making further purchases on this head, but of silver no one ever yet possessed so much that he was forced to cry “Enough.” On the contrary, if ever anybody does become possessed of an immoderate amount he finds as much pleasure in digging a hole in the ground and hoarding it as an actual employment of it.... When a state is prosperous there is nothing which people so much desire as silver. The men want money to expend on beautiful armor and fine horses, and houses and sumptuous paraphernalia of all sorts. The women betake themselves to expensive apparel and ornaments of gold. Or when states are sick, either through barrenness of corn and other fruits, or through war, the demand for current coin is even more imperative (whilst the ground lies unproductive), to pay for necessaries or military aid.” (Transl. by H. G. Dakyns, London, 1892, v. 2, Revenues, p. 335-336.) Aristotle develops in Book I., ch. 9 of his Politics the two opposite movements of circulation. C-M-C and M-C-M, calling them “economics” and “chrematistics” respectively. The two forms are represented by the Greek tragedian Euripides as Sikn (right) and Keodos (profit).
[103] Of course, capital also is advanced in the shape of money, and the money thus advanced may be advanced capital, but this point of view does not fall within the horizon of simple circulation.
[104] “The difference between the means of purchase and the means of payment” is emphasized by Luther.
[105] Mr. MacLeod, in spite of his doctrinaire conceit about definitions, fails so utterly to grasp the most elementary economic relations that he tries to deduce the very origin of money from its crowning form, viz., that of a means of payment. He says among other things that since people do not always need each other’s services at the same time, and not to the same extent, “there would remain over a certain difference or amount of service due from the first to the second—debt.” The owner of this debt needs the services of a third person, who does not directly need those of the second, and “transfers to the third the debt due to him from the first. Evidence of debts changes so hands—currency.... When a person received an obligation expressed by metallic currency, he is able to command the services not only of the original debtor, but of the whole of the industrious community.” (MacLeod, “Theory and Practice of Banking,” etc., London, 1855, v. I., ch. I.)
[106] Bailey, l. c., p. 3. “Money is the general commodity of contracts, or that in which the majority of bargains about property, to be completed at a future time, are made.”
[107] Says Senior (in his Lectures, published by Comte Arrivabene, l. c., p. 117): “Since the value of everything changes within a certain period of time, people select as a means of payment an article whose value changes least and which retains longest a given average ability to buy things. Thus, money becomes the expression or representative of values.” On the contrary: just because gold, silver, etc., have become money, i. e., the embodiment of independently existing exchange value, they become the universal means of payment. When the consideration as to the stability of the value of money mentioned by Mr. Senior comes into play, i. e., in periods when money asserts itself as the universal means of payment through the force of circumstances, then is just the time when fluctuations in the value of money are discovered. Such was the time of Elizabeth in England, when Lord Burleigh and Sir Thomas Smith, in view of the manifest depreciation of the precious metals, put through an act of parliament which obliged the universities of Oxford and Cambridge to stipulate the payment of one-third of their ground rents in wheat and malt.
[108] Boisguillebert, who would stem the development of bourgeois relations of production and violently attacks the bourgeois personally, has a soft heart for those forms of money in which it appears only ideally or transiently. Thus he speaks first of the medium of circulation and next of the means of payment. What he does not see is the direct transition of money from its ideal to the material form, since the hard cash is latently present in the ideal measure of value. That money is but another form of commodities, he says, is shown by wholesale trade, in which exchange takes place without the intervention of money, after “les marchandises sont appreciés.” (“Le Detail de la France,” l. c. p. 210.)
[109] Locke, l. c., p. 17, 18.
[110] “Il danaro ammassato supplisce a quella somma, che per essere attualmente in circolazione, per l’eventuale promiscuità de ‘commerci si allontana e sorte della sfera della circolazione medesima.” (“The accumulated money supplements that amount which, in order to be actually in circulation and to meet all possible perturbations of trade, retires from that sphere of circulation.” (G. R. Carli, note to Berri’s “Meditazioni sulla Economia Politica,” p. 196, t. XV. of Custodi’s l. c.)
[111] Montanari, “Della Moneta,” 1683, l. c., p. 40. “È cosi fattamente diffusa per tutto il globo terrestre la communicazione de ‘populi insieme, che puo quasi dirsi esser il mondo tutto divinuto una sola citta in cui si fa perpetua fiera d’ogni mercanzia, e dove ogni uomo di tutto cio che la terra, gli animali e l’umana industria altrove producono, puo mediante il danaro stando in sua casa provedersi e godere. Maravigliosa invenzione.” (“The communication of nations among themselves is so widely extended all over the globe that it may be almost said that the entire world has become one city in which a perpetual fair of merchandise is held and where every man may by means of money acquire and enjoy, while staying at home, all that the earth, the animals and human industry produce elsewhere. Marvelous invention.”)