of another commodity. A, e. g., sells £2 worth of iron. He thus completes the transaction C—M or the first metamorphosis of commodity iron, but postpones his purchase until some other time. At the same time B, who sold 2 quarters of wheat for £6 a fortnight since, buys with the same £6 a coat and trousers of Moses & Son, thus completing M—C or the second metamorphosis of
The two transactions M—C and C—M appear here merely as links of one chain, because a commodity expressed in gold looks like any other commodity, and one cannot tell by the looks of the gold whether it is transformed iron or transformed wheat. C—M—C appears, therefore, in the actual process of circulation as a jumble of countless accidentally coinciding or successively following members of different complete metamorphoses. The actual process of circulation thus appears not as a complete metamorphosis of a commodity, not as its movement through opposite phases, but as a mere agglomeration of many accidentally coinciding or successive purchases and sales. The process thus loses all clearness of outline which is so much more the case since every single