Transformation of Money into Capital, Circulation of Commodities: from Karl Marx Capital In Pictures

Hugo Gellert

From the portfolio of 60 lithographs entitled "Karl Marx's Capital in Pictures". The accompanying text page number is 27. The octopus is a representation of commodities; an organization with branches that reach out in powerful and influential ways to create a head that is made of a bag of money.

'Circulation of Commodities' states in part: "The first chief function of money is to supply commodities with the material for the expression of their values, or to represent their values as magnitudes of the same denomination, qualitatively equal, and quantitatively comparable. It thus serves as a universal measure of value. And only by virtue of this function does gold, the equivalent commodity par excellence, become money.

It is not money that renders commodities commensurable. Just the contrary. It is because all commodities, as values, are realised human labour, and therefore commensurable, that their values can be measured by one and the same special commodity, and the latter be converted into the common measure of their values, i.e., into money. Money as a measure of value, is the phenomenal form that must of necessity be assumed by that measure of value which is immanent in commodities, labour-time."