> Gold was more important in pre-capitalist social orders than in
> capitalism. Doesn't Marx somewhere discuss the difference between
> pre-capitalist hoarding andcapitalist accumulation?
This is another aspect of Marx's analysis of capitalism as "science" in the sense of Hegel's "higher dialectic of the conception."
The relevant idea here is the idea, also appropriated from Hegel, of the "passions," motives which, though inconsistent with fully rational motives and without conscious intention on the part of those motivated by them, "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
The dominant capitalism "passion," according to Marx, is "avarice."
“Everything which the political economist takes from you in life and humanity, he replaces for you in money and wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power - all this it can appropriate for you - it can buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/needs.htm
This mistaken treatment of "money" as true "wealth" constitutes the capitalist's "self-estrangement," a claim in support of which Shakespeare and Goethe are quoted in the manuscript pointed to by Joanna.
“The distorting and confounding of all human and natural qualities, the fraternisation of impossibilities – the divine power of money – lies in its character as men’s estranged, alienating and self-disposing species-nature. Money is the alienated ability of mankind.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/power.htm
The capitalist “passions” themselves develop as capitalism moves from “the barbaric form of production for the sake of production,” “the accumulation of money for the sake of money” (<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch02_3.htm>), to its “civilized” mature industrial form.
In the "barbaric form," money is identified with gold and avarice appears as auri sacra fames. The form is personified by the "hoarder" - "a martyr to exchange-value, a holy ascetic seated at the top of a metal column." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch02_3.htm
"Modern society, which, soon after its birth, pulled Plutus by the hair of his head from the bowels of the earth, greets gold as its Holy Grail, as the glittering incarnation of the very principle of its own life." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch03.htm
Though this form sinks beneath the surface in mature industrial capitalism, it continues to constitute what Marx calls the "inner man" of the capitalist. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch02_3.htm#13
"Money is not just an object of the passion for enrichment, it is the object of it. This urge is essentially auri sacra fames." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch04.htm
Engels and Marx find this development of the capitalist "passions" reflected in the development of political economy from the "monetary and mercantile systems" to classical political economy.
"This political economy or science of enrichment born of the merchants' mutual envy and greed, bears on its brow the mark of the most detestable selfishness. People still lived in the naive belief that gold and silver were wealth, and therefore considered nothing more urgent than the prohibition everywhere of the export of the 'precious' metals. The nations faced each other like misers, each clasping to himself with both arms his precious moneybag, eyeing his neighbours with envy and distrust. Every conceivable means was employed to lure from the nations with whom one had commerce as much ready cash as possible, and to retain snugly within the customs boundary all which had happily been gathered in.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/df-jahrbucher/outlines.htm
Marx claims, however, that these early forms contain a truth about capitalist motives ignored by classical political economy, namely, that even in mature industrial capitalism "money is not just an object of the passion for enrichment, it is the object of it."
“The unceasing fight of modern economists against the Monetary and Mercantile systems is mainly provoked by the fact that the secret of bourgeois production, i.e., that it is dominated by exchange-value, is divulged in a naively brutal way by these systems. … Political economy errs in its critique of the Monetary and Mercantile systems when it assails them as mere illusions, as utterly wrong theories, and fails to notice that they contain in a primitive form its own basic presuppositions. … The functions of gold and silver as money, in contradistinction to their functions as means of circulation and in contrast with all other commodities, are not abolished even in the most advanced bourgeois economy, but merely restricted; the Monetary and Mercantile systems accordingly remain valid.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch02c.htm
He also claims this ignoring of “the secret of bourgeois production, i.e., that it is dominated by exchange-value,” is one reason "Ricardo and his entire school never understood the really modern crises," in particular, never understood “monetary crises.” In such crises the submerged "inner man" of the capitalist resurfaces and once more overtly dominates motivation.
“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.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch02_3b.htm
Ted