all commodities. Gold is, therefore, the bodily representative of material wealth. It is the “precis de toutes les choses” (Boisguillebert), the compendium of the wealth of society. At one and the same time, it is the direct incarnation of universal labor in its form, and the aggregate of all concrete labor in its substance. It is universal wealth individualized.87 As a medium of circulation it underwent all kinds of injury, was clipped, and even reduced to the condition of a mere symbolic paper rag. As money it is restored to its golden glory.88 From a serve it becomes a lord. From a mere understrapper it rises to the position of Lord of commodities.89
a. HOARDING.
Gold separates itself as money from the process of circulation whenever a commodity interrupts the process of its metamorphosis and remains in its form of a gold chrysalis. This occurs every time a sale is not immediately followed by purchase. The independent isolation of gold as money is, thus, a material expression of the disintegration of the process of circulation, or of the metamorphosis of commodities, into two separate acts independent of each other.