As the production of commodities further develops, every producer
 of commodities is compelled to make sure of the nexus rerum or the social
 pledge. [41] His wants are constantly making themselves
 felt, and necessitate the continual purchase of other people’s commodities,
 while the production and sale of his own goods require time, and depend
 upon circumstances. In order then to be able to buy without selling, he
 must have sold previously without buying. This operation, conducted on
 a general scale, appears to imply a contradiction. But the precious metals
 at the sources of their production are directly exchanged for other commodities.
 And here we have sales (by the owners of commodities) without purchases
 (by the owners of gold or silver). [42] And subsequent
 sales, by other producers, unfollowed by purchases, merely bring about
 the distribution of the newly produced precious metals among all the owners
 of commodities. In this way, all along the line of exchange, hoards of
 gold and silver of varied extent are accumulated. With the possibility
 of holding and storing up exchange-value in the shape of a particular commodity,
 arises also the greed for gold. Along with the extension of
 circulation, increases the power of money, that absolutely social form
 of wealth ever ready for use. “Gold is a wonderful thing! Whoever possesses
 it is lord of all he wants. By means of gold one can even get souls into
 Paradise.” (Columbus in his letter from Jamaica, 1503.) Since gold does
 not disclose what has been transformed into it, everything, commodity or
 not, is convertible into gold. Everything becomes saleable and buyable.
 The circulation becomes the great social retort into which everything is
 thrown, to come out again as a gold-crystal. Not even are the bones of
 saints, and still less are more delicate res sacrosanctae, extra commercium
 hominum able to withstand this alchemy. [43] Just as
 every qualitative difference between commodities is extinguished in money,
 so money, on its side, like the radical leveller that it is, does away
 with all distinctions. [43a] But money itself is a
 commodity, an external object, capable of becoming the private property
 of any individual. Thus social power becomes the private power of private
 persons. The ancients therefore denounced money as subversive of the economic
 and moral order of things. [43b] Modern society, which,
 soon after its birth, pulled Plutus by the hair of his head from the bowels
 of the earth, [44] greets gold as its Holy Grail, as
 the glittering incarnation of the very principle of its own life.