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JOHN LOCKE, who was an advocate of the new bourgeoisie in all forms, the manufacturers against the working classes and paupers, the commercial class against the old fashioned usurers, the financial aristocracy against the state debtors, and who went so far as to prove in his own work that the bourgeois reason is the normal human reason, also took up the challenge against Lowndes. John Locke carried the day and money borrowed at ten or fourteen shillings to a guineaPg 94 was repaid in guineas of twenty shillings.49 SIR JAMES STEUART sums up the entire transaction as follows: " ... the state gained considerably upon the score of taxes, as well as the creditors upon their capitals and interest; and the nation, which was the principal loser, was pleased; because their standard (The standard of Pg 95their own value) was not debased."50 Steuart thought that the nation would prove more alert with the further development of commerce. He was mistaken. About 120 years later the same quid pro quo was repeated.

It was just in the order of things that Bishop BERKELEY, the representative of a mystical idealism in English philosophy, should have given a theoretical turn to the doctrine of the ideal unit of measure of money, something which the practical "Secretary to the Treasury" had failed to do. He asks: "Whether the terms Crown, Livre, Pound Sterling, etc., are not to be considered as Exponents or Denominations of such Proportion? [namely proportions of abstract value as such.] And whether Gold, Silver, and Paper are not Tickets or Counters for Reckoning, Recording and Transferring thereof? (of the proportion of value). Whether Power to command the Industry of others be not real Wealth? And whether Money be not in Truth, Tickets or Tokens for conveying and recording such Power, and whether it be of great consequence what Materials the Tickets are made of?"51 Here we find a confusion, first of the measure of Pg 96value and the standard of price, and secondly of gold and silver as measures on the one hand and mediums of circulation on the other. Because precious metals can be replaced by tokens in the process of circulation Berkeley comes to the conclusion that these tokens represent nothing, i. e., only the abstract idea of value.

SIR JAMES STEUART had so fully developed the theory of the ideal unit of measure of money, that his successors—unconscious successors since they do not know him—have added to it neither a new version nor even a new example. "Money, which I call of account, is no more than an arbitrary scale of equal parts, invented for measuring the respective value of things vendible. Money of account, therefore, is quite a different thing from money coin, which is price52 and might exist, although there was no such thing in the world as any substance which could become an adequate and proportional equivalent, for every commodity.... Money of account ... performs the same office with regard to the value of things, that degrees, minutes, seconds, etc., do with regard to angles, or as scales do to geographical maps, or to plans of any kind. In all these inventions, there is constantly some denomination taken for the unit. Pg 97... The usefulness of all those inventions being solely confined to the marking of proportion. Just so the unit in money can have no invariable determinate proportion to any part of value, that is to say, it cannot be fixed to any particular quantity of gold, silver, or any other commodity whatsoever. The unit once fixed, we can, by multiplying it, ascend to the greatest value.... The value of commodities, therefore, depending upon a general combination of circumstances relative to themselves and to the fancies of men, their value ought to be considered as changing only with respect to one another; consequently, anything which troubles or perplexes the ascertaining those changes of proportion by the means of a general, determinate and invariable scale, must be hurtful to trade.... Money ... is an ideal scale of equal parts. If it be demanded what ought to be the standard value of one part? I answer by putting another question: What is the standard length of a degree, a minute, a second? It has none ... but so soon as one part becomes determined by the nature of a scale, all the rest must follow in proportion. Of this kind of money ... we have two examples. The bank of Amsterdam presents us with the one, the coast of Angola with the other."53

Steuart speaks here simply of the part money plays in circulation as the standard of price and money of account. If different commodities are marked in the price-list at 15s., 20s., 36s., respectively, then I care, Pg 98in fact, neither for the silver substance, nor for the name of the shilling when comparing the magnitudes of their values. The ratios between the numbers 15, 20, 36, tell everything, and the number 1 has become the only unit of measure. Only the abstract proportion of numbers can at all serve as a purely abstract expression of proportion. In order to be consistent, Steuart should have dropped not only gold and silver, but their legal baptismal names as well. Since he does not understand the nature of the transformation of the measure of value into a standard of price, he naturally believes that the definite quantity of gold which serves as a unit of measure relates as a measure not to other quantities of gold, but to values as such. Since commodities appear as quantities of the same denomination through the conversion of their exchange values into prices, he denies that property of the measure which reduces them to one denomination; and since in this comparison of different quantities of gold the quantity of gold which serves as a unit of measure is conventional, he does not see the necessity of fixing it at all. Instead of calling 1-360 part of a circle degree, he might give that name to 1-180th part; the right angle would then be measured by 45 degrees instead of 90, and acute and obtuse angles would be measured accordingly. Nevertheless, the measure of the angle would remain, then, as before, first a qualitatively definite mathematical figure, the circle, and second a quantitatively definite part of the circle. As for Steuart's economic illustrations, he refutes his own argument with one and does not prove anything with the other. The bank money of AmsterPg 99dam was, in fact, merely the reckoning name for Spanish doubloons, which retained their full weight by lying idly in the bank vaults, while the circulating coins became thinner from hard rubbing against the outer world. And as for the African idealists we have to abandon them to their fate until critical travelers will tell us more about them.54 The French assignat could be called an almost ideal money in Steuart's sense: "National property. Assignation of 100 francs." To be sure, the use-value which the assignation was supposed to represent, namely, the confiscated land, was indicated here, but the quantitative definition of the unit of measure was forgotten and "the franc" became a meaningless word. How much or how little land the assignation franc represented depended on the results of the public auctions. In practice, however, the assignation franc circulated as a token of value of silver money and its depreciation was, therefore, measured by this silver standard.