While the general measures of weight of the precious metals served as their original measures of value, the reverse process takes place now in the world market, and the reckoning names of money are turned back into corresponding weight names. In the same way, while shapeless crude metal (aes rude) was the original form of the medium of circulation and the coin form constituted but the official stamp certifying that a given piece of metal was of a certain weight, now the precious metal in its capacity of a world coin throws off its stamp and shape and reassumes the indistinguishable bullion form; and even if national coins, such as Russian imperials, Mexican dollars, and English sovereigns, do circulate abroad, their name is of no importance, and only their contents count. Finally, as international money, the precious metals come again to perform their original function of mediums of exchange, which, like the exchange of commodities, arose first not within the various primitive communities, but at their points of contact with one another. As world money, money thus reassumes its primitive form. On leaving the sphere of home circulation, it strips off the particular forms which it has acquired in the course of the development of the process of exchange within that particular national sphere, those local garbs of standard of price, of coin, of auxiliary coin, and of token of value.
We have seen that in the home circulation of a country, only one commodity serves as a measure of value. Since, however, that function is performed by gold in some countries and by silver in others, there is a double standard of value in the world market and money assumes two forms in all its other functions. The translation of the values of commodities from gold prices into silver prices and vice versa depends in each case upon the relative value of the two metals, which is constantly changing and, therefore, appears to be constantly in the process of determination. Commodity owners in every national sphere of circulation have to use gold and silver alternately for foreign circulation and thus to exchange the metal which is accepted as money at home for the metal which they happen to need as money abroad. Every nation is, therefore, utilizing both metals, gold and silver, as world money.