appears, therefore, that the token of value represents directly the value of commodities, by figuring not as a token of gold but as a token of the value which exists in the commodity alone and is only expressed in price. But it is a false appearance. The token of value is directly only a token of price, i. e., a token of gold, and only indirectly a token of value of a commodity. Unlike Peter Shlemihl, gold has not sold its shadow, but buys with its shadow. The token of value operates only in so far as it represents the price of one commodity as against that of another within the sphere of circulation, or in so far as it represents gold to every owner of commodities. A certain comparatively worthless object such as a piece of leather, a slip of paper, etc., becomes by force of custom a token of money material, but maintains its existence in that capacity only so long as its character as a symbol of money is guaranteed by the general acquiescence of the owners of commodities, i. e., so long as it enjoys a legally established conventional existence and compulsory circulation. Paper money issued by the state and circulating as legal tender is the perfected form of the token of value, and the only form of paper money, which has its immediate origin in metallic circulation or even in the simple circulation of commodities. Credit money belongs to a higher sphere of the social process of production and is governed by entirely different laws. Symbolic paper money does not in fact, differ in the least from subsidiary metal coin, except that it reaches wider spheres of circulation. We have seen that the mere technical development of the standard of price or of the mint price and later the shaping of gold bullion into coin have called forth the interference of the state; this circumstance brought about a visible separation of national circulation from the world circulation of commodities: this separation is completed by the evolution of coin into a token of value. As a mere medium of circulation money can assume an independent existence only within the sphere of national circulation.80
Our presentation has shown that the coin form of gold as