Jim.+115-153

The Chapter on Money, 1st part, pp 115-153

The first part about currency, credit and gold reserves wasn’t very interesting. But then it picks up half way through as he mulls over the concept of the commodity. This is familiar territory, but presented in a much less systematic way, with less clear terminology, but enjoyable and insightful. Marx’s way of thinking, his dialectic, is on display in this section.

Alfred Darimon, 1956, is concerned with the decline of gold reserves at the Banque de France. Apparently a Proudhonist.

fluctuations du portefeuille - value of securities held by the bank, which he sees as the “requirements of circulation”

Darimon is confused about the relationship between these three kinds of money, and therefor about money itself, which is Marx’s point of departure for an exposition on money. It’s interesting that Marx develops his theories and an explicit critique of others. In Capital he turns this critique into a systematic theory.

116: “...the bungling of the dilettante, and the intentional muddling together of the requirements of credit with those of monetary circulation...”

Decline in gold reserves represents a current account deficit: rising investment abroad, rising imports over exports. Within France banknotes are legal tender, but for transactions abroad only gold will do.

If banknotes are printed and their quantity grows relative to gold reserves, you get inflation.

Banks matter. The financial system both reflects and enables the “conditions of production”.

“labor money” as proposed by Proudhonist socialists, is not a solution, does not overcome “the contradictions inherent in the money relation...”

abolish the privilege of gold and silver

inconvertible notes, still denominated as gold/silver, value in practice, faith in state, must equal requirements of circulation

132: “Nominal value runs alongside its body as a mere shadow; whether the two balance can be shown only by actual convertibility (exchangeability).”

130: “Exports of gold are not the cause of the grain crisis, but the grain crisis is the cause of gold exports.”

gold is ‘nominally undepreciable’

134: “...how to overcome the rise and fall of prices. The way to do this: abolish prices. And how? By doing away with exchange value. But this problem arises: exchange corresponds to the bourgeois organization of society. Hence on last problem: to revolutionize bourgeois society economically. It would then have been self-evident from the outset that the evil of bourgeois society is not to be remedied by ‘transforming’ the banks for by founding a rational ‘money system’.”

134: labor theory of value

135: “What determines value is not the amount of labor time incorporated in products, but rather the amount of labor time necessary at a given moment.”

commodity exchange value natural product, product natural vs economic existence of commodity