009-Chapter-3-Money-Or-the-Circulation-of-Commodities-Section-1-The-Measure-of-Values

Chapter 3: Money, Or the Circulation of Commodities

货币（即商品流通）

Section 1: The Measure of Values

Value的标尺

Throughout this work, I assume, for the sake of simplicity, gold as the
money-commodity.

本书中，为方便叙述，我都假设金是货币商品。

The first chief function of money is to supply commodities with the material for
the expression of their values, or to represent their values as magnitudes of
the same denomination, qualitatively equal, and quantitatively comparable. It
thus serves as a universal measure of value. And only by virtue of this
function does gold, the equivalent commodity par excellence, become money.

货币的首要职能是以其肉体表现其他商品的Value，或者说，以同样的单位表示它们的Value（即相同的质，可比较的量）。因此，货币充当着Value的统一标尺。【货币是一把尺子，以同样的单位（例如盎司）测量其他商品的Value数量】也只有具有这个职能的等价物商品，才能算是货币。

It is not money that renders commodities commensurable. Just the contrary. It is
because all commodities, as values, are realised human labour, and therefore
commensurable, that their values can be measured by one and the same special
commodity, and the latter be converted into the common measure of their values,
i.e., into money. Money as a measure of value, is the phenomenal form that
must of necessity be assumed by that measure of value which is immanent in
commodities, labour-time.

并非有了货币，商品才能相互比较。恰恰相反，是因为各种商品作为Value，都是抽象人类劳动的凝结，因此才可以比较，才可以用货币的肉体来比较它们。作为Value标尺的货币，是商品内在Value标尺即劳动时间的现象形式。

The expression of the value of a commodity in gold – x commodity A = y
money-commodity – is its money-form or price. A single equation, such as 1 ton
of iron = 2 ounces of gold, now suffices to express the value of the iron in a
socially valid manner. There is no longer any need for this equation to figure
as a link in the chain of equations that express the values of all other
commodities, because the equivalent commodity, gold, now has the character of
money. The general form of relative value has resumed its original shape of
simple or isolated relative value. On the other hand, the expanded expression of
relative value, the endless series of equations, has now become the form
peculiar to the relative value of the money-commodity. The series itself, too,
is now given, and has social recognition in the prices of actual commodities. We
have only to read the quotations of a price-list backwards, to find the
magnitude of the value of money expressed in all sorts of commodities. But money
itself has no price. In order to put it on an equal footing with all other
commodities in this respect, we should be obliged to equate it to itself as its
own equivalent.

商品的Value用金表达（即x商品A=y货币商品）就是货币形式（即价格）。现在，要用社会公认的形式表达铁的Value，只要用“1吨铁=2盎司金”这个等式就足够了。

The price or money-form of commodities is, like their form of value generally, a
form quite distinct from their palpable bodily form; it is, therefore, a purely
ideal or mental form. Although invisible, the value of iron, linen and corn has
actual existence in these very articles: it is ideally made perceptible by their
equality with gold, a relation that, so to say, exists only in their own heads.
Their owner must, therefore, lend them his tongue, or hang a ticket on them,
before their prices can be communicated to the outside world. Since the
expression of the value of commodities in gold is a merely ideal act, we may use
for this purpose imaginary or ideal money. Every trader knows, that he is far
from having turned his goods into money, when he has expressed their value in a
price or in imaginary money, and that it does not require the least bit of real
gold, to estimate in that metal millions of pounds’ worth of goods. When,
therefore, money serves as a measure of value, it is employed only as imaginary
or ideal money. This circumstance has given rise to the wildest theories. But,
although the money that performs the functions of a measure of value is only
ideal money, price depends entirely upon the actual substance that is money. The
value, or in other words, the quantity of human labour contained in a ton of
iron, is expressed in imagination by such a quantity of the money-commodity as
contains the same amount of labour as the iron. According, therefore, as the
measure of value is gold, silver, or copper, the value of the ton of iron will
be expressed by very different prices, or will be represented by very different
quantities of those metals respectively.

商品用金表达自己的Value时，只需要头脑中的金，不需要现实中的金。【只要有个价格标签，不需要有实实在在的金摆在商品旁边】这个情况引出了种种最荒谬的学说。

If, therefore, two different commodities, such as gold and silver, are
simultaneously measures of value, all commodities have two prices – one a
gold-price, the other a silver-price. These exist quietly side by side, so long
as the ratio of the value of silver to that of gold remains unchanged, say, at
15:1. Every change in their ratio disturbs the ratio which exists between the
gold-prices and the silver-prices of commodities, and thus proves, by facts,
that a double standard of value is inconsistent with the functions of a
standard.

因此，如果有2种不同的商品，例如金和银，同时充当Value标尺，那么各种商品就都具有2个价格，即金价和银价。只要金银Value的比例不变，例如是15:1，那么金价和银价就可以相安无事地并存。一旦金银Value的比例变动，其他商品的金价和银价的比例就会跟着变动，这说明，Value的2个标尺并存是与Value标尺的职能冲突的。

Commodities with definite prices present themselves under the form: a
commodity A = x gold; b commodity B = z gold; c commodity C = y gold, &c.,
where a, b, c, represent definite quantities of the commodities A, B, C
and x, z, y, definite quantities of gold. The values of these commodities are,
therefore, changed in imagination into so many different quantities of gold.
Hence, in spite of the confusing variety of the commodities themselves, their
values become magnitudes of the same denomination, gold-magnitudes. They are now
capable of being compared with each other and measured, and the want becomes
technically felt of comparing them with some fixed quantity of gold as a unit
measure. This unit, by subsequent division into aliquot parts, becomes itself
the standard or scale. Before they become money, gold, silver, and copper
already possess such standard measures in their standards of weight, so that,
for example, a pound weight, while serving as the unit, is, on the one hand,
divisible into ounces, and, on the other, may be combined to make up
hundredweights. It is owing to this that, in all metallic currencies, the names
given to the standards of money or of price were originally taken from the
pre-existing names of the standards of weight.

商品的价格表现为这样的形式：a商品A=x金，b商品B=y金，c商品C=z金，等。a、b、c是商品的数量，x、y、z是金的数量。技术上，各种商品都在呼唤一个金的计量单位。这个单位还可以细分为更小的单位。金银铜在成为货币前，已经有了重量单位，例如，1英担=112磅，1磅=16盎司，英担、磅、盎司都是计量重量的单位。因此，金属货币就用计量重量的单位充当了计量Value的单位。

As measure of Value, and as standard of price, money has two entirely
distinct functions to perform. It is the measure of value inasmuch as it is the
socially recognised incarnation of human labour; it is the standard of price
inasmuch as it is a fixed weight of metal. As the measure of value it serves to
convert the values of all the manifold commodities into prices, into imaginary
quantities of gold; as the standard of price it measures those quantities of
gold. The measure of values measures commodities considered as values; the
standard of price measures, on the contrary, quantities of gold by a unit
quantity of gold, not the value of one quantity of gold by the weight of
another. In order to make gold a standard of price, a certain weight must be
fixed upon as the unit. In this case, as in all cases of measuring quantities of
the same denomination, the establishment of an unvarying unit of measure is
all-important. Hence, the less the unit is subject to variation, so much the
better does the standard of price fulfil its office. But only in so far as it is
itself a product of labour, and, therefore, potentially variable in value, can
gold serve as a measure of value.

货币的Value标尺和价格标准，是两个完全不同的职能。货币是人类劳动的化身，因而是Value标尺。货币是一定重量的贵金属，因而是价格标准。作为Value标尺，货币将各种商品的Value转化为价格，即价签上的金量。作为价格标准，货币计量的是金量。Value标尺计量的是商品Value。价格标准计量的是价格里包含多少份金（例如，某商品的价格是x磅或y盎司，那么这里的x、y就是价格标准）。【Value标尺是金与其他商品的Value比较，是金与其他商品的Value关系。价格标准是将多大的金条当作1单位的金，是人们如何切分金条的问题。】[第二版注：在英国的著作中，Value标尺（measure
of value）和价格标准（standard of
value）这两个概念极为混乱。它们的职能，从而它们的名称，经常被混淆起来。]

It is, in the first place, quite clear that a change in the value of gold does
not, in any way, affect its function as a standard of price. No matter how this
value varies, the proportions between the values of different quantities of the
metal remain constant. However great the fall in its value, 12 ounces of gold
still have 12 times the value of 1 ounce; and in prices, the only thing
considered is the relation between different quantities of gold. Since, on the
other hand, no rise or fall in the value of an ounce of gold can alter its
weight, no alteration can take place in the weight of its aliquot parts. Thus
gold always renders the same service as an invariable standard of price, however
much its value may vary.

首先，很清楚的是，金的Value的变化，不会影响金的价格标准。无论金的Value如何变化，1克金的重量都还是1克，1克金和12克金的Value比例都是1:12。价格方面，人们只考虑各个金量之间的比例。

In the second place, a change in the value of gold does not interfere with its
functions as a measure of value. The change affects all commodities
simultaneously, and, therefore, caeteris paribus, leaves their relative values
inter se, unaltered, although those values are now expressed in higher or
lower gold-prices.

其次，金的Value变动，不会妨碍金执行Value标尺的职能。如果金的Value增加1倍，其他商品的金价就会全部减小一半，它们之间的Value比例是不变的。

Just as when we estimate the value of any commodity by a definite quantity of
the use-value of some other commodity, so in estimating the value of the former
in gold, we assume nothing more than that the production of a given quantity of
gold costs, at the given period, a given amount of labour. As regards the
fluctuations of prices generally, they are subject to the laws of elementary
relative value investigated in a former chapter.

A general rise in the prices of commodities can result only, either from a rise
in their values – the value of money remaining constant – or from a fall in the
value of money, the values of commodities remaining constant. On the other hand,
a general fall in prices can result only, either from a fall in the values of
commodities – the value of money remaining constant – or from a rise in the
value of money, the values of commodities remaining constant. It therefore by no
means follows, that a rise in the value of money necessarily implies a
proportional fall in the prices of commodities; or that a fall in the value of
money implies a proportional rise in prices. Such change of price holds good
only in the case of commodities whose value remains constant. With those, for
example, whose value rises, simultaneously with, and proportionally to, that of
money, there is no alteration in price. And if their value rise either slower or
faster than that of money, the fall or rise in their prices will be determined
by the difference between the change in their value and that of money; and so
on.

【这一段是商品Value和货币Value的改变对商品价格的影响。都是线性影响，很简单。那些嫌弃Marx的经济理论没有公式的人们，看这里，这里就是公式。】

Let us now go back to the consideration of the price-form.

现在继续研究价格形式。

By degrees there arises a discrepancy between the current money-names of the
various weights of the precious metal figuring as money, and the actual weights
which those names originally represented. This discrepancy is the result of
historical causes, among which the chief are: – (1) The importation of foreign
money into an imperfectly developed community. This happened in Rome in its
early days, where gold and silver coins circulated at first as foreign
commodities. The names of these foreign coins never coincide with those of the
indigenous weights. (2) As wealth increases, the less precious metal is thrust
out by the more precious from its place as a measure of value, copper by silver,
silver by gold, however much this order of sequence may be in contradiction with
poetical chronology. The word pound, for instance, was the money-name given to
an actual pound weight of silver. When gold replaced silver as a measure of
value, the same name was applied according to the ratio between the values of
silver and gold, to perhaps 1-15th of a pound of gold. The word pound, as a
money-name, thus becomes differentiated from the same word as a weight-name. (3)
The debasing of money carried on for centuries by kings and princes to such an
extent that, of the original weights of the coins, nothing in fact remained but
the names.

逐渐地，金属货币的重量名称与它的实际重量不一样了。【1磅的金币，其重量不再是1磅重。】历史上起决定作用的因素是：（1）外国货币流入不发达民族，例如在古罗马，金币银币是作为外国商品流通的。这些外国货币的重量名称与本地重量名称是不一样的。【一样才怪】（2）随着财富增长，不太贵重的金属被更贵重的金属排挤，失去Value标尺的职能，银代替了铜，金代替了银，尽管这个顺序与诗人想象的年代顺序冲突。例如，“1磅”这个词，原本是指真实的1磅重量的银。后来金取代了银，成为货币，“1磅”就用来称呼1/15磅重的金了。“磅”的货币名称，就与它的重量名称区分开了。（3）几百年来，君王们不断降低铸币的成色，以至于铸币的重量只剩下个名称了。【我国唐代末期，金属货币便已不敷使用，迫使人们开始使用“短陌钱”。每一贯钱中有一千文铜钱，称“足陌钱”，不足一千文称“短陌钱”。当时每成交价值一贯钱的商品，买方只需交付约定俗成的七、八百文钱即可。】

These historical causes convert the separation of the money-name from the
weight-name into an established habit with the community. Since the standard of
money is on the one hand purely conventional, and must on the other hand find
general acceptance, it is in the end regulated by law. A given weight of one of
the precious metals, an ounce of gold, for instance, becomes officially divided
into aliquot parts, with legally bestowed names, such as pound, dollar, &c.
These aliquot parts, which thenceforth serve as units of money, are then
subdivided into other aliquot parts with legal names, such as shilling, penny,
&c. But, both before and after these divisions are made, a definite weight of
metal is the standard of metallic money. The sole alteration consists in the
subdivision and denomination.

这些历史过程，使金属的货币名称与金属的重量名称分离，并成为民族范围内的惯例。货币标准既是约定俗成的，又必须有统一标准，那么就由法律来规定了。例如1盎司重量的金，由官方划分为若干等份，给予法定名称，如磅、塔勒等。1磅成为法定货币单位后，又细分为其他法定名称，如先令、便士、分等。无论此前此后，一定重量的金属都是金属货币的标准。改变的只是细分方法和名称。

The prices, or quantities of gold, into which the values of commodities are
ideally changed, are therefore now expressed in the names of coins, or in the
legally valid names of the subdivisions of the gold standard. Hence, instead of
saying: A quarter of wheat is worth an ounce of gold; we say, it is worth £3
17s. 10 1/2d. In this way commodities express by their prices how much they are
worth, and money serves as money of account whenever it is a question of
fixing the value of an article in its money-form.

价格，或商品Value在头脑中所值的金量，就用铸币名称来表达了。因此，我们不说：1夸特小麦值1盎司金；我们说：它值3磅17先令10.5便士。商品用这种方式表示自己值多少。每当需要用货币形式确定一物的Value时，货币就充当计算货币。

The name of a thing is something distinct from the qualities of that thing. I
know nothing of a man, by knowing that his name is Jacob. In the same way with
regard to money, every trace of a value-relation disappears in the names pound,
dollar, franc, ducat, &c. The confusion caused by attributing a hidden meaning
to these cabalistic signs is all the greater, because these money-names express
both the values of commodities, and, at the same time, aliquot parts of the
weight of the metal that is the standard of money. On the other hand, it is
absolutely necessary that value, in order that it may be distinguished from the
varied bodily forms of commodities, should assume this material and unmeaning,
but, at the same time, purely social form.

物的名字与物的性质是两码事。我虽知某人名为雅各布（Jacob），但却完全不知其人品如何。同理，在磅、塔勒、法郎、杜卡特等货币名称上，我们完全看不到Value关系的痕迹。货币名称既表示商品Value，又表示某一金属重量即货币标准的等份。这使得人们对这些神秘符号含义的理解更混乱了。另一方面，Value与有肉体的商品不同，它必然发展为这种名实分离的纯社会的形式。

Price is the money-name of the labour realised in a commodity. Hence the
expression of the equivalence of a commodity with the sum of money constituting
its price, is a tautology, just as in general the expression of the relative
value of a commodity is a statement of the equivalence of two commodities. But
although price, being the exponent of the magnitude of a commodity’s value, is
the exponent of its exchange-ratio with money, it does not follow that the
exponent of this exchange-ratio is necessarily the exponent of the magnitude of
the commodity’s value. Suppose two equal quantities of socially necessary labour
to be respectively represented by 1 quarter of wheat and £2 (nearly 1/2 oz. of
gold), £2 is the expression in money of the magnitude of the value of the
quarter of wheat, or is its price. If now circumstances allow of this price
being raised to £3, or compel it to be reduced to £1, then although £1 and £3
may be too small or too great properly to express the magnitude of the wheat’s
value; nevertheless they are its prices, for they are, in the first place, the
form under which its value appears, i.e., money; and in the second place, the
exponents of its exchange-ratio with money. If the conditions of production, in
other words, if the productive power of labour remain constant, the same amount
of social labour-time must, both before and after the change in price, be
expended in the reproduction of a quarter of wheat. This circumstance depends,
neither on the will of the wheat producer, nor on that of the owners of other
commodities.

Magnitude of value expresses a relation of social production, it expresses the
connexion that necessarily exists between a certain article and the portion of
the total labour-time of society required to produce it. As soon as magnitude of
value is converted into price, the above necessary relation takes the shape of a
more or less accidental exchange-ratio between a single commodity and another,
the money-commodity. But this exchange-ratio may express either the real
magnitude of that commodity’s value, or the quantity of gold deviating from that
value, for which, according to circumstances, it may be parted with. The
possibility, therefore, of quantitative incongruity between price and magnitude
of value, or the deviation of the former from the latter, is inherent in the
price-form itself. This is no defect, but, on the contrary, admirably adapts the
price-form to a mode of production whose inherent laws impose themselves only as
the mean of apparently lawless irregularities that compensate one another.

价格可能偏离商品Value的数量。但这不是价格形式的缺点，恰恰相反，它完美契合了那种价格不规则波动的生产模式。

The price-form, however, is not only compatible with the possibility of a
quantitative incongruity between magnitude of value and price, i.e., between
the former and its expression in money, but it may also conceal a qualitative
inconsistency, so much so, that, although money is nothing but the value-form of
commodities, price ceases altogether to express value. Objects that in
themselves are no commodities, such as conscience, honour, &c., are capable of
being offered for sale by their holders, and of thus acquiring, through their
price, the form of commodities. Hence an object may have a price without having
value. The price in that case is imaginary, like certain quantities in
mathematics. On the other hand, the imaginary price-form may sometimes conceal
either a direct or indirect real value-relation; for instance, the price of
uncultivated land, which is without value, because no human labour has been
incorporated in it.

价格形式，不仅会引起价格和Value的不一致，还隐藏着一个质的矛盾，以至于，尽管货币是商品的Value形式，价格却完全不是Value的表现。有的物不是商品，如良心、荣誉等，却能够以某个价格卖掉，也就是说，通过具有价格，获得了商品的形式。因此，一物可能有价格而无Value。例如，未开垦的土地没有Value，但却可以卖出一个价格。这种情形又使理解Value关系变得困难。

Price, like relative value in general, expresses the value of a commodity
(e.g., a ton of iron), by stating that a given quantity of the equivalent
(e.g., an ounce of gold), is directly exchangeable for iron. But it by no
means states the converse, that iron is directly exchangeable for gold. In
order, therefore, that a commodity may in practice act effectively as
exchange-value, it must quit its bodily shape, must transform itself from mere
imaginary into real gold, although to the commodity such transubstantiation may
be more difficult than to the Hegelian “concept,” the transition from
“necessity” to “freedom,” or to a lobster the casting of his shell, or to Saint
Jerome the putting off of the old Adam. Though a commodity may, side by side
with its actual form (iron, for instance), take in our imagination the form of
gold, yet it cannot at one and the same time actually be both iron and gold. To
fix its price, it suffices to equate it to gold in imagination. But to enable it
to render to its owner the service of a universal equivalent, it must be
actually replaced by gold. If the owner of the iron were to go to the owner of
some other commodity offered for exchange, and were to refer him to the price of
the iron as proof that it was already money, he would get the same answer as St.
Peter gave in heaven to Dante, when the latter recited the creed –

“Assad bene e trascorsa
D’esta moneta gia la lega e’l peso,
Ma dimmi se tu l’hai nella tua borsa.”

商品旁边有它的价签，只能说明商品有可能卖出去，但不能说明此商品一定能卖出去。从可能卖掉到已经卖掉，与龙虾脱壳相比，与教父圣哲罗姆（Saint Jerome）解脱原罪相比，与黑格尔派（Hegelian）的“概念”从“必然”过渡到“自由”相比，都更加困难。商品必须被金代替，才能对卖出者起到一般等价物的作用。例如，如果铁的所有者遇到某他种商品的所有者，向后者说铁的价格已经是货币形式了【向后者说这个铁可以视为等Value的金了】，后者就会像圣彼得（St. Peter）在天堂听了但丁（Dante）讲述信仰要义之后那样回答说：
“它虽值这么多钱，但你口袋里有这个钱吗？”

A price therefore implies both that a commodity is exchangeable for money, and
also that it must be so exchanged. On the other hand, gold serves as an ideal
measure of value, only because it has already, in the process of exchange,
established itself as the money-commodity. Under the ideal measure of values
there lurks the hard cash.

价格形式，既暗示了商品可能换到货币，又暗示了商品必须换到货币才行。另一方面，金能在头脑中充当Value标尺，是以金在贸易历史上成为了货币商品为前提的。在头脑中的Value标尺背后，是实实在在的金的硬实力。