Finally, the susceptibility of gold and silver of being turned from coin into bullion, from bullion into articles of luxury and vice versa, i. e. the advantage they possess as against other commodities in not being tied down to a definite, exclusive form in which they can be used, makes them the natural material of money, which must constantly change from one form to another.
Nature no more produces money than it does bankers or discount rates. But since the capitalist system of production requires the crystallization of wealth as a fetich in the form of a single article, gold and silver appear as its appropriate incarnation. Gold and silver are not money by nature, but money is by nature gold and silver. In the first place, the silver or gold money crystal is not only the product of the process of circulation, but in fact its only final product. In the second place, gold and silver are ready and direct products of nature, not distinguished by any difference of form. The universal product of the social process or the social process itself as a product is a peculiar natural product, a metal hidden in the bowels of the earth and extracted therefrom.[1]
We have seen that gold and silver are unable to fulfill
- ↑ In 760 a multitude of poor people emigrated to the south of Prague to wash the gold sand found there, and three men were able to extract three marks of gold a day. As a result of that the run on the "diggings" and the number of hands taken away from agriculture became so great that the country was visited by a famine the following year. See M. G. Körner, "Abhandlung von dem Alterthum des Böhmischen Bergwerks," Sehneeberg, 1758.
