A Contribution to the Critique of Political EconomyMarx, Karl
Philosophy
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Marx, Karl
Economics; Marxian economics
In Slavic communities also, money, as well as exchange to which it
owes its existence, does not appear at all or very little within the
separate communities, but it appears on their boundaries in their
inter-communal traffic; in general, it is erroneous to consider
exchange as a constituent element originating within the community.
It appears at first more in the mutual relations between different
communities, than in those between the members of the same community.
Furthermore, although money begins to play its part everywhere at an
early stage, it plays in antiquity the part of a predominant element
only in one-sidedly developed nations, viz. trading nations, and even
in most cultured antiquity, in Greece and Rome, it attains its full
development, which constitutes the prerequisite of modern bourgeois
society, only in the period of their decay. Thus, this quite simple
category attained its culmination in the past only at the most advanced
stages of society. Even then it did not pervade (?) all economic
relations; in Rome e. g. at the time of its highest development taxes
and payments in kind remained the basis. As a matter of fact, the money
system was fully developed there only so far as the army was concerned;
it never came to dominate the entire system of labor.
Thus, although the simple category may have existed historically before
the more concrete one, it can attain its complete internal and external
development only in complex (?) forms of society, while the more
concrete category has reached its full development in a less advanced
form of society.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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