can follow each other in point of time only, and on the contrary, the many scattered purchases and sales which appear as so many separate changes of place between commodities and money, occur simultaneously separated only in point of
The circulation of commodities C—M—C in its elementary form is completely described in the transition of money from the hands of the buyer into those of the seller and from the hands of the latter, as soon as he has turned buyer, into those of a new seller. This completes the metamorphosis of the commodity and with it the movement of money in so far as that movement is the expression of the metamorphosis. But since new use-values are continually produced in the shape of new commodities and must thus be constantly thrown anew into circulation, the process C—M—C is repeatedly renewed by the same commodity owners. The money which they have spent as buyers gets back into their hands as soon as they appear again as vendors of commodities. The constant renewal of the circulation of commodities finds its reflection in the continual circulation over the entire surface of bourgeois society of a quantity of money which, passing from hand to hand, describes at the same time a number of different small cycles starting from numberless points and returning each to its own starting point, to repeat the same movement over again.