Note 131 — Chapter II · (continued 3)

Note to the 2nd edition: This is not an exact statement. Adam Smith expresses the law correctly on many occasions. [See Capital, Humboldt edition, p. 62, ft-note 1, where writing seven years later, Marx makes the following qualification: “This statement applies only in so far as Adam Smith, ex officio, treats of money. Now and then, however, as in his criticism of the earlier systems of political economy, he takes the right view. ‘The quantity of coin in every country is regulated by the value of the commodities which are to be circulated by it.... The value of the goods annually bought and sold in any country requires a certain quantity of money to circulate and distribute them to their proper consumers, and can give employment to no more. The channel of circulation necessarily draws to itself a sum sufficient to fill it, and never admits any more.’ Wealth of Nations, Book iv., ch. I.”