A Contribution to the Critique of Political EconomyMarx, Karl
Philosophy
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Marx, Karl
Economics; Marxian economics
all the trade and all money, secretly bury their money deep in the
ground, “being imbued with the faith that the gold and silver which
they put away during their lives will serve them after death in the
next world.”[94] However, in so far as the asceticism of the hoarder is
combined with active industry, he is rather a Protestant by religion
and still more a Puritan. “It can not be denied that buying and selling
are necessary, that one can not get along without them, and that one
can buy like a Christian especially things that serve in need and in
honor; for the patriarchs had also bought and sold cattle, wool, grain,
butter, milk and other goods. They are gifts of God which He gives out
of the earth and divides among men. But foreign trade which brings
over from Calcutta, India and other such places commodities consisting
of costly silks, and gold ware, and spices which only serve for luxury
and are of no use, draining the land and the people of their money,
should not be tolerated if we but had a government of princes. Yet I
do not wish to write of that now, for I believe it will have to stop
of itself, when we have no money any longer; and so will luxury and
gluttony; for no writing or teaching will help until want and poverty
will force us.”[95]
In times of disturbance in the process of the social interchange of
matter, the burying of money takes place even in bourgeois societies
which are at a high stage of development. The social bond in its
compact form is being saved from the social movement (with the owner
of commodities this bond is the commodity and the adequate form of the
commodity is money). The social _nervus rerum_ is buried next to the
body whose nerve it is.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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