Jack Fitzgerald
Source: Socialist Standard, September 1923.
Transcription: Socialist Party of Great Britain.
HTML Markup: Adam Buick
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2016). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit "Marxists Internet Archive" as your source.
W. W.'s letter adds further evidence that he is confused on the question under discussion. This is most clearly shown in his concluding paragraph, where he quotes Marx as saying "that gold is the commodity par excellence" ; and then W. W. continues, "And the form it takes up in Britain is the sovereign." The implication, whether wilful or accidental, is that the latter statement belongs also to Marx. This, of course, is false. Nowhere does Marx state that the sovereign (or the ducat, or napoleon, or any other national coin) is the general equivalent or universal commodity. Marx always shows that it is gold as a metal, as a particular substance, that performs that function.
As we have explained before, the sovereign is a piece of gold—but a piece of gold, shaped, weighed and stamped for specific social uses and restricted in ways quite unknown to commodities. One may purchase gold and melt it down for any purpose, but one must not—legally—melt down sovereigns. One may shape gold into ornaments, but one must not interfere with the sovereign for any such purpose. In other words, the law does, not—in general—interfere with anyone buying and using gold for any purpose, but it sternly forbids any such action with sovereigns. Moreover, the sovereign performs function— such as legal tender in payment of debt—that no commodity can fulfil.
Outside of Britain the sovereign loses these various characteristics and becomes a mere piece of gold, which exchanges by weight, and is therefore no longer a sovereign. It is this simple fact that W. W. has failed to understand. His confusion is further shown by his misuse of words in fairly common use, as when he asks for the "law" whereby we distinguish commodity wealth from wealth in general. The use of the word "law" in this connection is nonsense. Twice previously we have defined a "commodity" for him, and as he neither questions nor shows our definition as being in error, one can only wonder why the question is repeated, even though it is done in a nonsensical form.
W. W.'s remarks on surplus value are absurdly incorrect. If the slave and serf could not produce surplus value how were their masters able to revel in huge luxury? Not only did this occur under chattel slavery and feudalism, but in certain transition periods later both slave and serf were used to produce surplus values for capitalists, as in cotton growing in South America and gold production on the Rand.