Marx, Karl: Das Kapital. Buch III: Der Gesammtprocess der kapitalistischen Produktion. Kapitel I bis XXVIII. Hamburg, 1894.

Zunächst ist klar, dass im ersten der beiden obigen Fälle, zur
Zeit der Prosperität, wo die Masse des cirkulirenden Mediums
wachsen muss, die Nachfrage dafür wächst. Aber es ist eben so

the demand for pecuniary accommodation (i. e. for the loan of capital) is
identical with a demand for additional means of circulation, or even that
the two are frequently associated. Each demand originates in circumstances
peculiarly affecting itself, and very distinct from each other. It is when
everything looks prosperous, when wages are high, prices on the rise, and
factories busy, that an additional supply of currency is usually required to
perform the additional functions inseparable from the necessity of making
larger and more numerous payments; whereas it is chiefly in a more
advanced stage of the commercial cycle, when difficulties begin to present
themselves, when markets are overstocked, and returns delayed, that interest
rises, and a pressure comes upon the Bank for advances of capital. It is
true that there is no medium through which the Bank is accustomed to
advance capital except that of its promissory notes; and that, to refuse the
notes, therefore, is to refuse the accommodation. But, the accommodation
once granted, everything adjusts itself in conformity with the necessities of
the market; the loan remains, and the currency, if not wanted, finds its way
back to the issuer. Accordingly, a very slight examination of the Parliament-
ary Returns may convince any one, that the securities in the hand of the
Bank of England fluctuate more frequently in an opposite direction to its
circulation than in concert with it, and that the example, therefore, of that
great establishment furnishes no exception to the doctrine so strongly pressed
by the country bankers, to the effect that no bank can enlarge its circulation,
if that circulation be already adequate to the purposes to which a bank-
note currency is commonly applied; but that every addition to its advances,
after that limit is passed, must be made from its capital, and supplied by
the sale of some of its securities in reserve, or by abstinence from further
investment in such securities. The table compiled from the Parliamentary
Returns for the interval between 1833 and 1840, to which I have referred
in a preceding page, furnishes continued examples of this truth; but two
of these are so remarkable that it will be quite unnecessary for me to go beyond
them. On the 3^rd January, 1837, when the resources of the Bank were strained
to the uttermost to sustain credit and meet the difficulties of the money
market, we find its advances on loan and discount carried to the enormous
sum of £ 17022000, an amount scarcely known since the war, and almost
equal to the entire aggregate issues, which, in the meanwhile, remain unmoved
at so low a point as £ 17076000! On the other hand, we have, on the
4^th of June 1833 a circulation of £ 18892000 with a return of private
securities in hand, nearly, if not the very lowest on record for the last half-
century, amounting to no more than £ 972000! (Fullarton, l. c. p. 97, 98.) —
Dass ein demand for pecuniary accomodation keineswegs identisch zu sein
braucht mit einem demand for gold (was Wilson, Tooke u. a. Kapital nennen)
sieht man aus folgenden Aussagen des Herrn Weguelin, Gouverneurs der
Bank von England: „Das Diskontiren von Wechseln bis zu diesem Belauf“
[eine Million täglich drei Tage hintereinander] „würde die Reserve“ [von
Banknoten] „nicht verringern, falls nicht das Publikum einen grössern Betrag
aktiver Cirkulation verlangte. Die beim Wechseldiskontiren ausgegebnen
Noten würden zurückfliessen durch Vermittlung von Banken und durch
Depositen. Falls nicht jene Transaktionen die Goldausfuhr zum Zweck haben,
oder falls nicht im Inland eine Panik herrscht, derart dass das Publikum
seine Banknoten festhält, statt sie an die Banken einzuzahlen, würde die
Reserve nicht berührt werden durch so gewaltige Umsätze.“ — „Die Bank