Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/258

each of the minor quantities taken separately. As the quantity of goods, against which the money is ail exchanged at once, is supposed to be the same, the value of all the money is no more, after the quantity is augmented, than before it was augmented. If it is supposed to be augmented one-tenth, the value of every part, that of an ounce for example, must be diminished one-tenth. . . . In whatever degree, therefore, the quantity of money is increased or diminished, other things remaining the same, in that same proportion, the value of the whole, and of every part, is reciprocally diminished or increased. This, it is evident, is a proposition universally true. Whenever the value of money has either risen or fallen (the quantity of goods against which it is exchanged and the rapidity of circulation remaining the same), the change must be owing to a corresponding diminution or increase of the quantity; and can be owing to nothing else. If the quantity of goods diminish, while the quantity of money remains the same, it is the same thing as if the quantity of money had been increased;" and vice versa. . . . "Similar changes are produced by any alteration in the rapidity of circulation. . . . An increase in the number of these purchases has the same effect as an increase in the quantity of money; a diminution the reverse. . . . If there is any portion of the annual produce which is not exchanged at all, as what is consumed by the producer; or which it not exchanged for money; that is not taken into the account, because what is not exchanged for money is in the same state with respect to the money, as if it did not exist. . . . Whenever the coining of money . . .