Evolution of Correlation between Money and Capital: How the Posited Transformed into Prerequisite

This article provides a Marxist analysis of how the role of money in the system of productive relations has evolved under late capitalism. The author shows that in the context of late capitalism the apportionment of money, as a special commodity whose nature is intertwined with its role as a universal equivalent, occurs differently from the pattern seen under the conditions of classical capitalism. After capital itself is transformed into a commodity, and then with the transformation of capital into the predominant commodity within the mass of commodities circulating in the market, it is the mass of circulating capitals that separates out from its midst a commodity that is also a universal equivalent. While under classical capitalism money and the commodity-money circulation acted as a precondition for the existence of capital, capital itself is now transformed into a precondition for the existence of money.
Linked to these changes are the shift from gold to credit money, the replacing of gold coins with symbols of value, and later, the complete divorce of money from the gold commodity and its transformation into a product regulated by the state and financial capital through credit emission.