>> Money is therefore not only an object, but is the object of greed. It is essentially auri sacra fames. Greed as such, as a particular form of the drive, i.e. as distinct from the craving for a particular kind of wealth, e.g. for clothes, weapons, jewels, women, wine etc., is possible only when general wealth, wealth as such, has become individualized in a particular thing, i.e. as soon as money is posited in its third quality. Money is therefore not ony the object but also the fountainhead of greed…. Hedonism in the abstract presupposes an object which possesses all pleasures in potentiality.
The context of this confirms the interpretive claim that Marx continued after 1844 to treat capitalism in accordance with Hegel's "higher dialectic of the conception" and, in particular, with Hegel's elaboration of this in terms of the idea of "self-estrangement."
Thus Marx claims in the text immediately preceding the above that money in capitalism is "the alienated ability of mankind" and implicitly elaborates true human "ability," human "species powers," as the developed virtuosity of an "individuality" able to "appropriate," as opposed to "buy," the aesthetic, intellectual and ethical objectifications of reason.
This repeats the claims about money made in the 1844 manuscript "The Power of Money," e.g.
"Assume man to be man and his relationship to the world to be a human one: then you can exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc. If you want to enjoy art, you must be an artistically cultivated person; if you want to exercise influence over other people, you must be a person with a stimulating and encouraging effect on other people. Every one of your relations to man and to nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking love in return – that is, if your loving as loving does not produce reciprocal love; if through a living expression of yourself as a loving person you do not make yourself a beloved one,then your love is impotent – a misfortune." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/power.htm
In what follows what's quoted above, self-estrangement is elaborated as "greed" treated as a "passion" in Hegel's sense, i.e. as an irrational motive that, in spite of its irrationality, works "behind the backs" of those dominated by it to "supply the impelling and actuating force for accomplishing deeds shared in by the community at large." http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/history3.htm
In it's mature industrial capitalist form, it is a condition for social development, in particular "for the development of all forces of production, material and mental."
"In order to function productively, money in its third role [i.e. as "self-estrangement"], as we have seen, must be not only the precondition but equally the result of circulation, and, as its precondition, also a moment of it, something posited by it. Among the Romans, who amassed money by stealing it from the whole world, this was not the case. It is inherent in the simple character of money itself that it can exist as a developed moment of production only where and when wage labour exists; that in this case, far from subverting the social formation, it is rather a condition for its development and a driving-wheel for the development of all forces of production, material and mental." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch04.htm
Marx also points to other forms, however, which are either not positively developmental (as in the Roman case) or less positively developmental than the mature industrial capitalist form. Thus he contrasts the form dominant in Spain with that dominant in other nations in the pre-industrial period of capitalist development and contrasts the latter (as exemplified by the "monetary system" and "mercantilism") with the mature industrial capitalist form.
"The period which precedes the development of modern industrial society opens with general greed for money on the part of individuals as well as of states. The real development of the sources of wealth takes place as it were behind their backs, as a means of gaining possession of the representatives of wealth. Wherever it does not arise out of circulation -- as in Spain -- but has to be discovered physically, the nation is impoverished, whereas the nations which have to work in order to get it from the Spaniards develop the sources of wealth and really become rich. This is why the search for and discovery of gold in new continents, countries, plays so great a role in the history of revaluation, because by its means colonization is improvised and made to flourish as if in a hothouse. The hunt for gold in all countries leads to its discovery; to the formation of new states; initially to the spread of commodities, which produce new needs, and draw distant continents into the metabolism of circulation, i.e. exchange. Thus, in this respect, as the general representative of wealth and as individualized exchange value, it was doubly a means for expanding the universality of wealth, and for drawing the dimensions of exchange over the whole world; for creating the true generality [Allgemeinheit] of exchange value in substance and in extension. But it is inherent in the attribute in which it here becomes developed that the illusion about its nature, i.e. the fixed insistence on one of its aspects, in the abstract, and the blindness towards the contradictions contained within it, gives it a really magical significance behind the backs of individuals. In fact, it is because of this self-contradictory and hence illusory aspect, because of this abstraction, that it becomes such an enormous instrument in the real development of the forces of social production." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch04.htm
The idea found in Capital of the "barbaric" form of the capitalist "passions" as continuing to constitute the "inner man" of the capitalist and as resurfacing in a "monetary crisis" is found here as well.
"among private individuals, accumulation takes place for the purpose of bringing wealth into safety from the caprices of the external world in a tangible form in which it can be buried etc., in short, in which it enters into a wholly secret relation to the individual. This, still on a large historical scale, in Asia. Repeats itself in every panic, war etc. in bourgeois society, which then falls back into barbaric conditions. Like the accumulation of gold etc. as ornament and ostentation among semi-barbarians. But a very large and constantly growing part of it withdrawn from circulation as an object of luxury in the most developed bourgeois society. (See Jacob etc.) [7] As representative of general wealth, it is precisely its retention without abandoning it to circulation and employing it for particular needs, which is proof of the wealth of individuals; and to the degree that money develops in its various roles, i.e. that wealth as such becomes the general measure of the worth of individuals, [there develops] the drive to display it, hence the display of gold and silver as representatives of wealth; in the same way, Herr v. Rothschild displays as his proper emblem, I think, two banknotes of £100,000 each, mounted in a frame. The barbarian display of gold etc. is only a more naive form of this modern one, since it takes place with less regard to gold as money. Here still the simple glitter. There a premeditated point. The point being that it is not used as money; here the form antithetical to circulation is what is important." ttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch04.htm
Ted