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GRAY.[1] He makes a National Central Bank ascertain through its branches the labor-time consumed in the production of various commodities. The producer receives an official certificate of value in exchange for his commodity, i. e., he gets a receipt for as much labor-time as his commodity contains,[2] and these bank notes of one week's labor, one day's labor, one hour's labor, etc., serve at the same time as a check for an equivalent in all other commodities stored in the bank warehouses.[3] This is the fundamental principle carefully worked out in detail and based throughout on existing English institu-
- ↑ John Gray: "The Social System. A Treatise on the Principle of Exchange, Edinburgh, 1831." Compare with "Lectures on the Nature and Use of Money, Edinburgh, 1848," by the same author. After the February revolution Gray sent a memorial to the provisional French government, in which he instructs the latter that France is not in need of an "organization of labour," but of an "organization of exchange" of which the plan is fully worked out in his money system. Honest John did not suspect that sixteen years after the appearance of his "Social System" a patent for the same discovery would be taken out by the ingenious Proudhon.
- ↑ Gray, "The Social System," etc., p. 63: "Money should be merely a receipt, an evidence that the holder of it has either contributed certain value to the national stock of wealth or that he has acquired a right to the same value from some one who has contributed to it."
- ↑ An estimated value being previously put upon produce, let it be lodged in a bank, and drawn out again, whenever it is required, merely stipulating, by common consent, that he who lodges any kind of property in the proposed National Bank, may take out of it an equal value of whatever it may contain, instead of being obliged to draw out the self-same thing that he put in." L. c., p. 68.
