Inside the capital circuit: what money is and what it does

One view, argued by Williams (2000), is that Marx simply made a ‘category mistake’ when he introduced commodity money into his theory of value. If money is fully determined by its social functions in capitalism then the physical characteristics assumed by money become historically contingent so that ‘commodity-money is necessary neither to the logic of Marx’s system nor to the logic of capitalism’ (section 5, para 4). Williams reaches this the conclusion on the basis of a ‘careful reconciliation of Marx’s initial develöpment of money as a commodity with his equally systematic presentation of the functions of money’ (ibid.). Specifically, ‘Marx’s categorical development of the value-form soon transcends commodity aspects of money’ (ibid.).