Money, money circulation and credit - стр. 5
But it should be noted that the gold in itself is not money but the money are gold. Thus we emphasize that the transformation of gold into money is not the natural but objectively social process which takes a lot of time.
With the money form of value appearance the goods receive a specific form of its cost existence in term of price (moreover it is a certain quantity of gold on which the good could be exchanged).
The transition from the subsistence to commercial farming and the exchange equivalence compliance determined the necessity of money appearance without which the mass exchange of goods based on the production specialization and the commodity producers’ material insulation is impossible.
The necessity of money appearance and usage is proved by the numerous and unsuccessful attempts to get away without them. This is borne out by Robert Owen’s idea bankruptcy in 1832 who tried to exchange the goods without money by means of goods evaluation on the basis of work time expenditures with usage of «labor bons». The Russian experience was either unsuccessful when in 1918 and 1921 the attempt of product exchange on the basis of natural coefficients was applied.
In about the XII>th century B.C.E. in China and in the VII>th century B.C.E. in the Mediterranean States – Lydia and Aegina – the metal coins appeared which were similar by weight, size and alloy composition.
The evolution of money didn’t stop on this. We can distinguish the next stages of the cost’s forms development: the stage of transition to paper and credit money and then their phasing-out from the turnover as a result of what the electronic money appear.
Besides the mentioned above points of view the other metal and nominal theories (nominalism) in economics regarding money and their nature were expressed.
The metal theory identifies money with precious metals. The theory proves that money should certainly have an inmost value in order to perform its functions. The most significant followers of this theory were the mercantilists who considered that gold and silver are the money by their nature and in virtue of their natural features. This approach reflected the situation truly in whole for the systems with the full-bodied (commodity) money.
The nominalism identifies money by the symbols of value (signs), conventional payment units. The most important is not the metal content of money but their symbolism (nominal). First of all money are considered as the product of state power and legal relations when their purchasing power is determined by the State. In whole the nominal theory of money reflects the true nature of money in the modern economic systems.