Karl Marx's 
 
                 ECONOMIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 
                             written between  
                          April and August 1844 
 
 
                            THIRD MANUSCRIPT 
 
 
                                  Money 
 
If man's feelings, passions, etc., are not merely anthropological 
characteristics in the narrower sense, but are truly ontological 
affirmations of his essence (nature), and if they only really affirm 
themselves insofar as their object exists sensuously for them, then it 
is clear: 
 
(1) That their mode of affirmation is by no means one and the same, but 
rather that the different modes of affirmation constitute the particular 
character of their existence, of their life.  The mode in which the 
object exists for them is the characteristic mode of their 
gratification.  
 
(2) Where the sensuous affirmation is a direct annulment [Aufheben] of 
the object in its independent form (eating, drinking, fashioning of 
objects, etc.), this is the affirmation of the object.  
 
(3) Insofar as man, and hence also his feelings, etc., are human, the 
affirmation of the object by another is also his own gratification.  
 
(4) Only through developed industry -- i.e., through mediation of 
private property, does the ontological essence of human passion come 
into being, both in its totality and in its humanity; the science of man 
is, therefore, itself a product of the self-formation of man through 
practical activity.  
 
(5) The meaning of private property, freed from its estrangement, is the 
existence of essential objects for man, both as objects of enjoyment and 
of activity.  
 
Money, inasmuch as it possess the property of being able to buy 
everything and appropriate all objects, is the object most worth 
possessing.  The universality of this property is the basis of money's 
omnipotence; hence, it is regarded as an omnipotent being...  Money is 
the pimp between need and object, between life and man's means of life.  
But that which mediates _my_ life also mediates the existence of other 
men for me.  It is for me the other person.  
 
 
          What, man! confound it, hands and feet 
          And head and backside, all are yours! 
          And what we take while life is sweet, 
          Is that to be declared not ours? 
            Six stallions, say, I can afford, 
          Is not their strength my property? 
          I tear along, a sporting lord,  
          As if their legs belonged to me. 
 
                      (Goethe, _Faust_ -- Mephistopheles) 
                                      [ Part I, scene 4 ] 
 
 
Shakespeare, in _Timon of Athens_: 
 
          Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold! No, gods, 
          I am no idle votarist; roots, you clear heavens! 
          Thus much of this will make black, white; foul, fair; 
          Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant. 
          ... Why, this 
          Will lug your priests and servants from your sides; 
          Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads: 
          This yellow slave 
          Will knit and break religions; bless th'accurst; 
          Make the hoar leprosy adored; place thieves, 
          And give them title, knee, and approbation,  
          With senators on the bench: this is it 
          That makes the wappen'd widow wed again; 
          She whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores 
          Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices 
          To th'April day again.  Come, damned earth, 
          Thou common whore of mankind, that putt'st odds  
          Among the rout of nations, I will make thee 
          Do thy right nature. 
 
And, later on: 
 
          O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce 
          'Twixt natural son and sire!  Thou bright defiler 
          Of Hymen's purest bed!  Thou valiant Mars! 
          Thou ever young, fresh, loved and delicate wooer, 
          Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow 
          That lies on Dian's lap!  Thous visible god,  
          That solder'st close impossibilities, 
          And mak'st them kiss!  That speak'st with every tongue, 
          To every purpose!  O thou touch of hearts! 
          Think, thy slave man rebels; and by thy virtue 
          Set them into confounding odds, that beasts 
          May have in world empire! 
 
 
Shakespeare paints a brilliant picture of the nature of money.  To 
understand him, let us begin by expounding the passage from Goethe.  
 
That which exists for me through the medium of money, that which I can 
pay for, i.e., that which money can buy, that am I, the possessor of 
money.  The stronger the power of my money, the stronger am I.  The 
properties of money are my, the possessor's, properties and essential 
powers.  Therefore, what I am and what I can do is by no means 
determined by my individuality.  I am ugly, but I can buy the most 
beautiful woman.  Which means to say that I am not ugly, for the effect 
of ugliness, its repelling power, is destroyed by money.  As an 
individual, I am lame, but money procurs me 24 legs.  Consequently, I am 
not lame.  I am a wicked, dishonest, unscrupulous and stupid individual, 
but money is respected, and so also is its owner.  Money is the highest 
good, and consequently its owner is also good.  Moreover, money spares 
me the trouble of being dishonest, and I am therefore presumed to be 
honest.  I am mindless, but if money is the true mind of all things, how 
can its owner be mindless? What is more, he can buy clever people for 
himself, and is not he who has power over clever people cleverer than 
them? Through money, I can have anything the human heart desires.  Do I 
not possess all human abilities? Does not money therefore transform all 
my incapacities into their opposite? 
 
If money is the bond which ties me to human life and society to me, 
which links me to nature and to man, is money not the bond of all bonds? 
Can it not bind and loose all bonds? Is it therefore not the universal 
means of separation? It is the true agent of separation and the true 
cementing agent, it is the chemical power of society.  
 
Shakespeare brings out two properties of money in particular: 
 
(1) It is the visible divinity, the transformation of all human and 
natural qualities into their opposites, the universal confusion and 
inversion of things; it brings together impossibilities.  
 
(2) It is the universal whore, the universal pimp of men and peoples.  
 
The inversion and confusion of all human and natural qualities, the 
bringing together of impossibilities, the divine power of money lies in 
its nature as the estranged and alienating species-essence of man which 
alienates itself by selling itself.  It is the alienated capacity of 
mankind.  
 
What I, as a man, do -- i.e., what all my individual powers cannot do -- 
I can do with the help of money.  Money, therefore, transforms each of 
these essential powers into something which it is not, into its 
opposite.  
 
If I desire a meal, or want to take the mail coach because I am not 
strong enough to make the journey on foot, money can provide me both the 
meal and the mail coach -- i.e., it transfers my wishes from the realm 
of imagination, it translates them from their existence as thought, 
imagination, and desires, into their sensuous, real existence, from 
imagination into life, and from imagined being into real being.  In this 
mediating role, money is the truly creative power.  
 
Demand also exists for those who have no money, but their demand is 
simply a figment of the imagination.  For me, or for any other third 
party, it has no effect, no existence.  For me, it therefore remains 
unreal and without an object.  The difference between effective demand 
based on money and ineffective demand based on my need, my passion, my 
desire, etc., is the difference between being and thinking, between a 
representation which merely exists within me and one which exists 
outside me as a real object.  
 
If I have money for travel, I have no need -- i.e., no real and 
self-realizing need -- to travel.  If I have a vocation to study, but no 
money for it, I have _no_ vocation to study -- i.e., no real, true 
vocation.  But, if I really do not have any vocation to study, but have 
the will and the money, then I have an _effective_ vocation do to so.  
Money, which is the external, universal means and power -- derived not 
from man as man, and not from human society as society -- to turn 
imagination into reality and reality into more imagination, similarly 
turns real human and natural powers into purely abstract 
representations, and therefore imperfections and phantoms -- truly 
impotent powers which exist only in the individual's fantasy -- into 
real essential powers and abilities.  Thus characterized, money is the 
universal inversion of individualities, which it turns into their 
opposites and to whose qualities it attaches contradictory qualities.  
 
Money, therefore, appears as an _inverting_ power in relation to the 
individual and to those social and other bonds which claim to be 
essences in themselves.  It transforms loyalty into treason, love into 
hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into 
master, master into servant, nonsense into reason, and reason into 
nonsense.  
 
Since money, as the existing and active concept of value, confounds and 
exchanges everything, it is the universal _confusion_ and _exchange_ of 
all things, an inverted world, the confusion and exchange of all natural 
and human qualities.  
 
He who can buy courage is brave, even if he is a coward.  Money is not 
exchange for a particular quality, a particular thing, or for any 
particular one of the essential powers of man, but for the whole 
objective world of man and of nature.  Seen from the standpoint of the 
person who possesses it, money exchanges every quality for every other 
quality and object, even if it is contradictory; it is the power which 
brings together impossibilities and forces contradictions to embrace.  
 
If we assume man to be man, and his relation to the world to be a human 
one, then love can be exchanged only for love, trust for trust, and so 
on.  If you wish to enjoy art, you must be an artistically educated 
person; if you wish to exercise influence on other men, you must be the 
sort of person who has a truly stimulating and encouraging effect on 
others.  Each one of your relations to man -- and to nature -- must be a 
particular expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your 
real individual life.  If you love unrequitedly -- i.e., if your love as 
love does not call forth love in return, if, through the vital 
expression of yourself as a loving person, you fail to become a loved 
person -- then your love is impotent, it is a misfortune.  
 
 
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