HKB
get no funds for the maintenance and development of industry except through private sources, or it does create such a fund and ceases to practice "equal work for equal work."
This is the fact about the exchange in the economic society, but what about the form of it? According to Herr Duehring in his economic society money does not function as money between the members of the society. It serves merely as a labor certificate; it corresponds with the expression of Marx "only the share of the individual of the common labor, and his individual claim to the consumption of a certain portion of the common product" and in this function, says Herr Duehring, it is just as little money as a theater ticket. In short it functions in exchange like Owens "labor-time money." As far as the mere calculating between amount due for production and the amount to be expended in consumption of the individual member of the society is concerned, paper markers or gold would serve the purpose equally well. But it would not do for other purposes as will appear.
If the specie does not function as money among the members of a given society, but as a mark of labor, it functions still less as money in the exchange between different economic societies. According to the theory of Herr Duehring, therefore, specie as money is entirely superfluous. In fact it would be mere bookkeeping to set off the products of equal labor against the products of equal labor, according to the natural measure of labor-time, taking the labor-hour as a unit--if the labor hours are first translated into terms of money. Exchange is in reality only simple exchange; all surpluses are easily and simply equalized by means of bills of exchange on other societies. But when one community has a deficit in its dealings with another community it can only make it up by increasing its labor output, if it is not to suffer disgrace in the eyes of other communities. The reader will notice here that this is no attempt at social reconstruction. We are simply taking the notions of Herr Duehring and showing their unavoidable conclusions.