014-Section-3-Money-A-Hoarding

Section 3: Money

货币

The commodity that functions as a measure of value, and, either in its own
person or by a representative, as the medium of circulation, is money. Gold (or
silver) is therefore money. It functions as money, on the one hand, when it has
to be present in its own golden person. It is then the money-commodity, neither
merely ideal, as in its function of a measure of value, nor capable of being
represented, as in its function of circulating medium. On the other hand, it
also functions as money, when by virtue of its function, whether that function
be performed in person or by representative, it congeals into the sole form of
value, the only adequate form of existence of exchange-value, in opposition to
use-value, represented by all other commodities.

充当Value标尺和流通手段的商品（它本身或它的代表作为流通手段），就是货币。因此，金（或银）是货币。金以货币的角色活跃，是在这两种情况下：一，当金以其肉身出现时，此时，这个货币商品，不是头脑中的（像在头脑中充当Value标尺那样），也不是可以被代表的（像充当流通手段那样）；二，由于其职能（无论是由它的肉身执行还是它的符号执行），金成为唯一的Value形式，成为交换价值的唯一形式，与其他商品代表的使用价值对立。此时，它也执行货币的职能。

A. Hoarding

贮藏

The continual movement in circuits of the two antithetical metamorphoses of
commodities, or the never ceasing alternation of sale and purchase, is reflected
in the restless currency of money, or in the function that money performs of a
perpetuum mobile of circulation. But so soon as the series of metamorphoses is
interrupted, so soon as sales are not supplemented by subsequent purchases,
money ceases to be mobilised; it is transformed, as Boisguillebert says, from
“meuble” into “immeuble,” from movable into immovable, from coin into money.

商品的两种对立形式的不断运动，即卖和买的永不停息的交错，反映为无休止的货币流通，即货币作为流通的永动机的职能。可是，一旦形态变换被打断，一旦卖之后没有继之以买，货币就不动了；如布阿吉尔贝尔（Boisguillebert）所说，货币从动的变为不动的，从铸币变为货币。

With the very earliest development of the circulation of commodities, there is
also developed the necessity, and the passionate desire, to hold fast the
product of the first metamorphosis. This product is the transformed shape of the
commodity, or its gold-chrysalis. Commodities are thus sold not for the purpose
of buying others, but in order to replace their commodity-form by their
money-form. From being the mere means of effecting the circulation of
commodities, this change of form becomes the end and aim. The changed form of
the commodity is thus prevented from functioning as its unconditionally
alienable form, or as its merely transient money-form. The money becomes
petrified into a hoard, and the seller becomes a hoarder of money.

随着商品流通的最初发展，人们产生了强烈的愿望，想要紧紧抓住第一形态变化的产物（即金）的愿望。这个产物是变了形的商品，或者说，商品蛹化为金。因此，卖商品不是为了买其他商品，而是为了用货币形式取代商品形式。第一形态变化，原本只是商品流通的手段和中间阶段，现在成为了目的和终点。商品的货币形态，不再转瞬即逝。货币不再流通，而是被贮藏起来，卖家成为货币贮藏者。

In the early stages of the circulation of commodities, it is the surplus
use-values alone that are converted into money. Gold and silver thus become of
themselves social expressions for superfluity or wealth. This naive form of
hoarding becomes perpetuated in those communities in which the traditional mode
of production is carried on for the supply of a fixed and limited circle of home
wants. It is thus with the people of Asia, and particularly of the East Indies.
Vanderlint, who fancies that the prices of commodities in a country are
determined by the quantity of gold and silver to be found in it, asks himself
why Indian commodities are so cheap. Answer: Because the Hindus bury their
money. From 1602 to 1734, he remarks, they buried 150 millions of pounds
sterling of silver, which originally came from America to Europe. In the 10
years from 1856 to 1866, England exported to India and China £120,000,000 in
silver, which had been received in exchange for Australian gold. Most of the
silver exported to China makes its way to India.

商品流通的早期，只有使用价值的剩余部分转化为货币。金银成为这部分财富的社会表现。在有些民族中，其生产方式是自给自足的，与之适应的需求范围是固定封闭的。这种天真朴素的贮藏形式，就在这些民族中成为永恒了。因此，在亚洲人，特别是印度人那里，情况就是这样。范德林特（Vanderlint），他认为一个国家内的商品价格取决于这个国家的内的金银量。他自问：为什么印度的商品这么便宜？他回答：因为印度人埋藏货币。他指出，从1602到1734年，印度人埋藏了1.5亿英镑的银，这些银最初是从美洲运到欧洲的。从1856到1866年的10年间，英格兰向印度和中国输出了1.2亿英镑的银，这些银之前是用澳大利亚的金换来的。【澳大利亚是英国殖民地。】这些输出到中国的银，大部分又流入了印度。

As the production of commodities further develops, every producer of commodities
is compelled to make sure of the nexus rerum or the social pledge. His wants are
constantly making themselves felt, and necessitate the continual purchase of
other people’s commodities, while the production and sale of his own goods
require time, and depend upon circumstances. In order then to be able to buy
without selling, he must have sold previously without buying. This operation,
conducted on a general scale, appears to imply a contradiction. But the precious
metals at the sources of their production are directly exchanged for other
commodities. And here we have sales (by the owners of commodities) without
purchases (by the owners of gold or silver). And subsequent sales, by other
producers, unfollowed by purchases, merely bring about the distribution of the
newly produced precious metals among all the owners of commodities. In this way,
all along the line of exchange, hoards of gold and silver of varied extent are
accumulated. With the possibility of holding and storing up exchange-value in
the shape of a particular commodity, arises also the greed for gold. Along with
the extension of circulation, increases the power of money, that absolutely
social form of wealth ever ready for use. “Gold is a wonderful thing! Whoever
possesses it is lord of all he wants. By means of gold one can even get souls
into Paradise.” (Columbus in his letter from Jamaica, 1503.) Since gold does not
disclose what has been transformed into it, everything, commodity or not, is
convertible into gold. Everything becomes saleable and buyable. The circulation
becomes the great social retort into which everything is thrown, to come out
again as a gold-crystal. Not even are the bones of saints, and still less are
more delicate res sacrosanctae, extra commercium hominum able to withstand this
alchemy. Just as every qualitative difference between commodities is
extinguished in money, so money, on its side, like the radical leveller that it
is, does away with all distinctions. But money itself is a commodity, an
external object, capable of becoming the private property of any individual.
Thus social power becomes the private power of private persons. The ancients
therefore denounced money as subversive of the economic and moral order of
things. Modern society, which, soon after its birth, pulled Plutus by the hair
of his head from the bowels of the earth, greets gold as its Holy Grail, as the
glittering incarnation of the very principle of its own life.

随着商品生产的发展，每个商品生产者都不得不握有这个“物的神经”，这个“社会的抵押品”。他的需求使他不断买别人的商品，然而他生产和销售自己的商品，却需要时间和运气。为了能在卖不掉的时候也能买，他就必须在此之前已经卖了而没有买。【手里必须有现金。】这种做法要普遍实行，似乎是自相矛盾的。【如果每个人都卖的多买的少，那么卖和买的数量就不一致了。】但注意，贵金属在产地是直接与其他商品交换的。【原来差额在这里！】这里，商品所有者有卖无买，金银所有者有买无卖。其他生产者的卖多买少，仅仅是新开采的贵金属在所有商品生产者之间的分配过程。这样，金银在各个交易链上各个结点的贮藏就完成了。自从交换价值可以用金的形式贮藏，对金的贪婪就诞生了。随着商品流通的扩大，货币的力量增长了，货币成为财富的随时可用的绝对社会形式。“金是神奇的东西！无论谁，拥有它就拥有了一切。拥有它，就可以使灵魂升入天堂。”（1503年哥伦布（Columbus）从牙买加（Jamaica）寄出的信）从金身上看不出，它是由什么东西转化来的。因此，一切东西，无论是不是商品，都可以用来换取金了。一切都可以买卖了。流通过程，成了巨大的社会的蒸馏器。任何扔进去的东西，出来的时候都结晶为金。就算是圣人的遗骨、佛陀的舍利，也无力抗拒这个蒸馏器。货币不仅消灭了不同商品的质的差别，作为激进的平均主义者，它消灭了一切差别。但货币自己就是商品，是身外之物，可能成为任何个人的私有财产。因此，社会权力就成了个人的私有权力。因此，古人谴责货币，说它是经济秩序和道德秩序的破坏者。【有钱能使鬼推磨，有钱能使磨推鬼。】现代社会刚诞生不久，就拽着财神普鲁托（Plutus）头发把他拖出地心，就将金视为它的圣杯，将金视为它的生活准则的光辉化身。

A commodity, in its capacity of a use-value, satisfies a particular want, and is
a particular element of material wealth. But the value of a commodity measures
the degree of its attraction for all other elements of material wealth, and
therefore measures the social wealth of its owner. To a barbarian owner of
commodities, and even to a West-European peasant, value is the same as
value-form, and therefore, to him the increase in his hoard of gold and silver
is an increase in value. It is true that the value of money varies, at one time
in consequence of a variation in its own value, at another, in consequence of a
change in the values of commodities. But this, on the one hand, does not prevent
200 ounces of gold from still containing more value than 100 ounces, nor, on the
other hand, does it hinder the actual metallic form of this article from
continuing to be the universal equivalent form of all other commodities, and the
immediate social incarnation of all human labour. The desire after hoarding is
in its very nature unsatiable. In its qualitative aspect, or formally
considered, money has no bounds to its efficacy, i.e., it is the universal
representative of material wealth, because it is directly convertible into any
other commodity. But, at the same time, every actual sum of money is limited in
amount, and, therefore, as a means of purchasing, has only a limited efficacy.
This antagonism between the quantitative limits of money and its qualitative
boundlessness, continually acts as a spur to the hoarder in his Sisyphus-like
labour of accumulating. It is with him as it is with a conqueror who sees in
every new country annexed, only a new boundary.

商品作为使用价值，满足某种具体需求，是物质财富的一种具体要素。而商品的Value衡量它吸引其他物质财富要素的能力大小，因而衡量商品所有者的社会财富的大小。对商品的野蛮所有者来说，甚至对西欧乡下人来说，Value和Value形式是一样的，因此，对他们来说，金银贮藏的增加就是Value的增加。货币的Value变动，要么是货币自己的Value变了，要么是其他商品的Value变了。这没错。但是，这也改变不了200盎司金币100盎司金的Value多的事实，也改变不了金仍旧是一般等价物和人类劳动的社会化身的事实。对贮藏的需求是天然地永无止境的。货币，是物质财富的代表，具有与任何其他商品交换的性质，这个性质，是货币无限的能力。但同时，每一个货币额都是个有限的数量，因而作为购买手段，这个数量，只有有限的能力。货币性质的无限能力和货币数量的有限能力，这个对立，迫使贮藏者像西西弗斯（Sisyphus）一样不断地积累劳动。他们就像征服者一样，每当征服一个国家，就将其视为自己新的国界，进而去征服下一个国家。

In order that gold may be held as money, and made to form a hoard, it must be
prevented from circulating, or from transforming itself into a means of
enjoyment. The hoarder, therefore, makes a sacrifice of the lusts of the flesh
to his gold fetish. He acts in earnest up to the Gospel of abstention. On the
other hand, he can withdraw from circulation no more than what he has thrown
into it in the shape of commodities. The more he produces, the more he is able
to sell. Hard work, saving, and avarice are, therefore, his three cardinal
virtues, and to sell much and buy little the sum of his political economy.

要把金作为货币，进而作为贮藏货币，就不能让金流通，就不能把金用作购买手段化为消费品。因此，贮藏者为了囤积金而牺牲了自己的肉体享受。他虔诚地信奉禁欲的福音书。另一方面，他能从流通中取得的，只是他以商品形式投入流通中的。生产得越多，他就能卖得越多。勤劳、节俭、贪婪，就是他的三大基本美德，多卖少买就是他的全部政治经济学。

By the side of the gross form of a hoard, we find also its aesthetic form in the
possession of gold and silver articles. This grows with the wealth of civil
society. “Soyons riches ou paraissons riches” (Diderot).

除了贮藏货币这个丑陋的形式，我们还发现了它还有雅观的形式，即占有金器和银器。它随着市民社会的财富一同蔓延。“让我们成为富人或外表像富人吧。”——狄德罗（Diderot）

In this way there is created, on the one hand, a constantly extending market for
gold and silver, unconnected with their functions as money, and, on the other
hand, a latent source of supply, to which recourse is had principally in times
of crisis and social disturbance.

一方面，这创造了一个与金银的货币职能无关的金器银器市场，另一方面，它形成了一个潜在的货币供应源泉，在社会危机和动荡的时候提供金银。

Hoarding serves various purposes in the economy of the metallic circulation. Its
first function arises out of the conditions to which the currency of gold and
silver coins is subject. We have seen how, along with the continual fluctuations
in the extent and rapidity of the circulation of commodities and in their
prices, the quantity of money current unceasingly ebbs and flows. This mass
must, therefore, be capable of expansion and contraction. At one time money must
be attracted in order to act as circulating coin, at another, circulating coin
must be repelled in order to act again as more or less stagnant money. In order
that the mass of money, actually current, may constantly saturate the absorbing
power of the circulation, it is necessary that the quantity of gold and silver
in a country be greater than the quantity required to function as coin. This
condition is fulfilled by money taking the form of hoards. These reserves serve
as conduits for the supply or withdrawal of money to or from the circulation,
which in this way never overflows its banks.

货币贮藏在金属流通的经济中执行着各种职能。它的第一个职能源于金银铸币的流通条件。我们已经看到，随着商品流通的范围、速度的波动，随着商品价格的波动，流通的货币量也在不断波动。因此，这个货币量必须能伸能缩。有时，市场召唤更多的铸币的出现，有时，市场冷落一部分铸币，使之不再流通。为了使一国内的货币量足够市场的召唤，人们有必要持有比铸币总量更多的金银总量。这个条件，通过货币贮藏的形式达成了。这些贮藏的货币，时而进入市场时而退出市场，保证了商品流通的稳定。