Transferring the production of gold from one country to another produces no change whatever in the matter. One part of the social labour-power and the social means of production of country A is converted into a product, for instance linen, valued at £500, which is exported to country B in order to buy gold there. The productive capital thus employed in the country A throws no more commodities — as distinct from money — upon the market of country A than it would it if were employed directly in the production of gold. This product of A represents £500 in gold and enters into the circulation of this country only as money. That portion of the social surplus-value which is contained in this product exists for country A directly in the form of money, and never in any other form. Although for the gold-producing capitalists only a part of the product represents surplus-value, and another part of the replacement capital, still the question of how much of this gold, outside the circulating constant capital, replaces variable capital and how much of it represents surplus-value depends exclusively on the respective ratios of wages and surplus-value to the value of the circulating commodities. The part which forms surplus-value is distributed among the diverse members of the capitalist class. Although that part is continually spent by them for individual consumption and recovered by the sale of new products — it is precisely this purchase and sale that circulates among them the money required for the conversion of the surplus-value into money — there is nevertheless a portion of the social surplus-value, in the form of money, even if in varying proportions, in the pockets of the capitalists, just as a portion of the wages stays at least during part of the week in the pockets of the labourers in the form of money. And this part is not limited by that part of the money product which originally forms the surplus-value of the gold-producing capitalists, but, as we have said, is limited by the proportion in which the above product of £500 is generally distributed between capitalists and labourers, and in which the commodity-supply to be circulated consists of surplus-value and the other constituents of value.