APPENDIX II*
The theory of labor time.as the unity of direct measure of money was developed in a systematic manner for the first time by John Gray.
A central national bank, by the aid of its branches, would certify the time employed in the production of the different commodities. In exchange for his commodity the producer would receive an official certificate of its value—that is to say, a receipt for the labor time con- tained in his commodity,** and these notes of a week of
- (Extract from Marx’s work “Zur Kritik der Politischen
Ckonomie,” Berlin, 1859, pp. 61-64.)
+ John Gray—The Social System, &c.: Treatise on the Principle of Exchange,” Edinburgh, 1831. Composed by the same author: “Lectures on the Nature and Use of Money,’ Edinburgh, 1848, After the revolution of February, Gray sent to the Provisional Government a memorial in which he informed them that it was not the “organisation of labor” which France needed, but an “organisation of exchange,” a completely elaborated plan of which was to be found in the system of money which he had discovered. The worthy John never imagined that sixteen years after the publication of his “Social System,” a patent would be taken out for the same discovery by Proudhon, that genius so fertile in invention.
- Gray.—“The Social System,” &c., 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 someone who has soutmbitted to it.”
