On Aug 26, 2007, at 1:08 PM, Ted Winslow quoted Karl Marx:
> "Under conditions of advanced bourgeois production, when the
> commodity-owner has long since become a capitalist, knows his Adam
> Smith and smiles superciliously at the superstition that only gold
> and silver constitute money or that money is after all the absolute
> commodity as distinct from other commodities -- money then suddenly
> appears not as the medium of circulation but once more as the only
> adequate form of exchange-value, as a unique form of wealth just as
> it is regarded by the hoarder. The fact that money is the sole
> incarnation of wealth manifests itself in the actual devaluation and
> worthlessness of all physical wealth, and not in purely imaginary
> devaluation as for instance in the Monetary System. This particular
> phase of world market crises is known as monetary crisis. The summum
> bonum, the sole form of wealth for which people clamour at such
> times, is money, hard cash, and compared with it all other
> commodities -- just because they are use-values -- appear to be
> useless, mere baubles and toys, or as our Doctor Martin Luther says,
> mere ornament and gluttony. This sudden transformation of the credit
> system into a monetary system adds theoretical dismay to the actually
> existing panic, and the agents of the circulation process are
> overawed by the impenetrable mystery surrounding their own relations.
> [6]"
> <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/
> ch02_3b.htm>
I just have to say that's a terrific passage. It's a tough act for Keynes to follow.
Doug