HKB
but it could not increase the total sum of money neither could it increase the amount of commodities in circulation. "The entire capitalist class of a country cannot overreach itself."
Now, we find that the totality of the capitalist class in every country grows richer before our very eyes, by the process of selling dearer than it bought, by appropriating surplus value. So we are just at the beginning of the discussion. Where does this surplus value come from? This question has to be answered on purely economic grounds to the exclusion of all cheating, and all invasion of force. How is it possible to keep selling dearer than one buys under the assumption that equal values are always exchanged for equal values?
The solution of this problem is the crowning glory of the work of Marx. He sheds clear daylight in economic places where the earlier socialists no less than the bourgeois economists have groped in utter darkness. From his work dates the origin of scientific socialism.