this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Marx referred to gold/silver in his time and going back to the "new world" conquest as both a commodity and money. I think the reasoning goes that any commodity could be used as money, and it just so happened that silver (and gold) were rare enough and also considered valuable enough to adopt that role. I only remember this because that chapter (3 I think) is apparently very disliked by readers of Capital, but I enjoyed it for the historical background. He talks about the astronomical inflation in Spain mostly but also all of Europe due to the massive amounts of silver and gold being extracted from new mines in South America.
I think I'm gonna give that chapter a reread now that my curiosity is sparked.
Yes. What’s fascinating is that Spain and Portugal didn’t even have a form of early capitalism in place like they had in England, Holland, or maybe the Italian city-states. So instead of using that gold and silver to develop the productive forces, the Iberian kingdoms built massive armies, navies, cathedrals, commissioned art, and otherwise just blew it all while other parts of Europe were happy to take their gold and silver and use it productively.