The blog "Reification of Persons and Personification of Things" has unearthed an interesting-looking article by Jan Hoff from the journal Socialism and Democracy on the reception of Marx's Capital in contemporary Germany, as well as the "New Reading of Marx/monetary theory of value" school. The article is behind a paywall, but the extended extract looks interesting:
http://reificationofpersonsandpersonificationofthings.wordpress.com/2012/09/06/marx-in-germany/
There we find ,in part:
"During the 1990s, Heinrich had put forward a critical view of Marx’s theory of money as a commodity."
^^^^^ CB: Doesn't Marx treat Money (M) as "not a commodity" in the very fundamental formulas for the transformation of money into Money as capital. Capital's form _is_ Money. Capital in the C-M-C and M-C-M(1) formulas is not "C"; it is "M", money as capital. "C" is commodities. So, Money is distinguished as an opposite of Commodities at that point. Marx stops treating money as a commodity at this very crucial moment of analysis of Capital, in the book _Capital_.
What is the theoretical or practical need to critique Marx's treatment of money as a commodity earlier in the book ?
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Part II: The Transformation of Money into Capital
Chapter Four: The General Formula for Capital
Chapter Four: The General Formula for Capital
The circulation of commodities is the starting-point of capital. The production of commodities, their circulation, and that more developed form of their circulation called commerce, these form the historical ground-work from which it rises. The modern history of capital dates from the creation in the 16th century of a world-embracing commerce and a world-embracing market.
If we abstract from the material substance of the circulation of commodities, that is, from the exchange of the various use-values, and consider only the economic forms produced by this process of circulation, we find its final result to be money: this final product of the circulation of commodities is the first form in which capital appears.
As a matter of history, capital, as opposed to landed property, invariably takes the form at first of money; it appears as moneyed wealth, as the capital of the merchant and of the usurer. [1] But we have no need to refer to the origin of capital in order to discover that the first form of appearance of capital is money. We can see it daily under our very eyes. All new capital, to commence with, comes on the stage, that is, on the market, whether of commodities, labour, or money, even in our days, in the shape of money that by a definite process has to be transformed into capital.
The first distinction we notice between money that is money only, and money that is capital, is nothing more than a difference in their form of circulation.
The simplest form of the circulation of commodities is C-M-C, the transformation of commodities into money, and the change of the money back again into commodities; or selling in order to buy. But alongside of this form we find another specifically different form: M-C-M, the transformation of money into commodities, and the change of commodities back again into money; or buying in order to sell. Money that circulates in the latter manner is thereby transformed into, becomes capital, and is already potentially capital.
Now let us examine the circuit M-C-M a little closer. It consists, like the other, of two antithetical phases. In the first phase, M-C, or the purchase, the money is changed into a commodity. In the second phase, C-M, or the sale, the commodity is changed back again into money. The combination of these two phases constitutes the single movement whereby money is exchanged for a commodity, and the same commodity is again exchanged for money; whereby a commodity is bought in order to be sold, or, neglecting the distinction in form between buying and selling, whereby a commodity is bought with money, and then money is bought with a commodity. [2] The result, in which the phases of the process vanish, is the exchange of money for money, M-M. If I purchase 2,000 lbs. of cotton for £100, and resell the 2,000 lbs. of cotton for £110, I have, in fact, exchanged £100 for £110, money for money.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch04.htm