gold as a commodity, as a particular embodiment of labor-time; but in so far as it is the price that is realized in gold, the commodity is exchanged for gold in its capacity of money and not of a commodity, i. e., it is exchanged for gold as a universal embodiment of labor-time. But in either case the quantity of gold for which the commodity is exchanged in the process of circulation is not determined by exchange, but the exchange is determined by the price of the commodity, i. e., by its exchange value estimated in gold.[1]
Within the process of circulation gold appears in everybody's hands as the result of sale C—M. But since C—M, sale, is at the same time M—C, purchase, it is apparent that while C, the commodity from which the process starts, is pasing through its first metamorphosis, another commodity, which confronts it as the opposite pole M, is completing its second metamorphosis and is, therefore, passing through the second phase of circulation, while the first commodity is still in the first phase of its course.
As a result of the first phase of circulation, the sale, we get money which is the starting point of the second phase. In place of the commodity in its first form appears its golden equivalent. This result may now form a resting point, since the commodity in this second form
- ↑ This, of course, does not prevent the market price of commodities to be above or below their value. However, this consideration is foreign to simple circulation and belongs to quite another sphere to be considered later, when we shall investigate the relation between value and market price.
