第46章 MONEY OR SIMPLE CIRCULATION(27)

An outward expression of the desire to withdraw money from the stream of circulation and to save it from the social metabolism is the burying of it,so that social wealth is turned into an imperishable subterranean hoard with an entirely furtive private relationship to the commodity-owner.

Doctor Bernier,who spent some time at Aurangzeb's court at Delhi,relates that merchants,especially non-Moslem heathens,in whose hands nearly the entire commerce and all money are concentrated --secretly bury their money deep in the ground,"being held in thrall to the belief that the money they hide during their lifetime will serve them in the next world after their death".[9]

Incidentally,in so far as the hoarder of money combines asceticism with assiduous diligence he is intrinsically a Protestant by religion and still more a Puritan.

"It cannot be denied that buying and selling are necessary practices,which cannot be dispensed with and may surely be used in a Christian manner,especially as regards things that serve necessity and honour;for thus cattle,wool,corn,butter,milk and other goods were bought and sold by the patriarchs.These are gifts of God,which He produces from the soil and divides among men.But foreign trade,which brings merchandise from Calicut and India and other places --merchandise such as precious silks and jewellery and spices,which are used only for display and serve no need --and drains money from the country and the people,should not be permitted if we had a government and princes.But I do not want to write of this now,for I consider that in the end when we have no more money,it will have to be abandoned,and finery and gluttony as well;for all writing and preaching will be in vain until we are compelled by necessity and poverty."[10]

Even in advanced bourgeois societies hoards of money are buried at times of upheaval in the social metabolic process.This is an attempt to save social cohesion --for the commodity-owner this cohesion is represented by the commodity and the adequate embodiment of the commodity is money --in its compact form from the social movement.The social sinews of things are buried alongside the body whose sinews they are.

If the hoard were not constantly in tension with circulation,it would now simply be a heap of useless metal,its monetary soul would have disappeared and nothing but burnt-out ashes of circulation,its caput mortuum,would remain.Money,i.e.,exchange-value which has assumed an independent existence,is by nature the embodiment of abstract wealth;but,on the other hand,any given sum of money is a quantitatively finite magnitude of value.The quantitative delimitation of exchange-value conflicts with its qualitative universality,and the hoarder regards the limitation as a restriction,which in fact becomes also a qualitative restriction,i.e,the hoard is turned into a merely limited representation of material wealth.Money as the universal equivalent may be directly expressed,as we have seen,in terms of an equation,in which it forms one side while the other side consists of an endless series of commodities.The degree in which the realisation of exchange-value approaches such an infinite series,in other words how far it corresponds to the concept of exchange-value,depends on its magnitude.After all,movement of exchange-value as such,as an automaton,can only be expansion of its quantitative limits.But in passing one set of quantitative limits of the hoard new restrictions are set up,which in turn must be abolished.What appears as a restriction is not a particular limit of the hoard,but any limitation of it.The formation of hoards therefore has no intrinsic limits,no bounds in itself,but is an unending process,each particular result of which provides an impulse for a new beginning.Although the hoard can only be increased by being preserved,on the other hand it can only be preserved by being increased.

Money is not just an object of the passion for enrichment,it is the object of it.This urge is essentially auri sacra fames .

[The accursed greed for gold.--Ed .]The passion for enrichment by contrast with the urge to acquire particular material wealth,i.e.,use-values,such as clothes,jewellery,herds of cattle,etc.,becomes possible only when general wealth as such is represented by a specific thing and can thus be retained as a particular commodity.Money therefore appears both as the object and the source of the desire for riches.[11]The underlying reason is in fact that exchange-value as such becomes the goal,and consequently also an expansion of exchange-value.Avarice clings to the hoard and does not allow money to become a medium of circulation,but greed for gold preserves the monetary soul of the hoard and maintains it in constant tension with circulation.

The activity which amasses hoards is,on the one hand,the withdrawal of money from circulation by constantly repeated sales,and on the other,simple piling up,accumulation .It is indeed only in the sphere of simple circulation,and specifically in the form of hoards,that accumulation of wealth as such takes place,whereas the other so-called forms of accumulation,as we shall see later,are quite improperly,and only by analogy with simple accumulation of money,regarded as accumulation.