market. Paper notes are therefore "money of the society," while gold and silver are "money of the world."[1]
It is characteristic of nations with an "historical" development, in the sense in which the term is used by the historical school of law, to keep forgetting their own history. Although the controversy as to the relation of prices of commodities to the volume of the circulating medium has been continually agitating Parliament for the last half a century, and has precipitated in England thousands of pamphlets, large and small, Steuart has remained even more of a "dead dog" than Spinoza seemed to be to Moses Mendelson in Lessing's time. Even the latest writer on the history of "currency," Maclaren, makes Adam Smith the original author of Steuart's theory, and Ricardo of Hume's theory.[2]
- ↑ Steuart, l. c., v. 2, p. 370. Louis Blanc translates the expression "money of the society" which stands for home or national money, as socialist money, which is perfectly meaningless and makes a Socialist of John Law. (See the first volume of his History of the French Revolution).
- ↑ Maclaren, l. c. p. 43 seq. Patriotism led Gustav Julius, a German writer who met with very early death, to hold up old Büsh as an authority as against the Ricardian school. Honest
"The richest nation in Europe may be the poorest in circulating specie." l. c., v. 2, p. 6. For the polemics against Steuart see Arthur Young. [In his foot-note in Capital, v. 1, Part 1, ch. III., section 2, b. p. 62, Humboldt ed., Marx says: The theory of Hume was defended against the attacks of J. Steuart and others, by A. Young, in his "Political Arithmetic," London, 1774, in which work there is a special chapter entitled "Prices depend on quantity of money." Note by K. Kautsky to 2nd German edition].
