* Since gold does not disclose what has been transformed into it, everything,

commodity or not, is convertible into gold. Everything becomes saleable and buyable.

Circulation becomes the great social retort into which everything is thrown, to come

out again as crystallized gold. Not even are the bones of Saints, and still less are more

delicate res sactosancte extra commercium hominum [Sacrosanct things, beyond

everyday affairs] able to withstand this alchemy. Just as every qualitative difference

between commodities is extinguished in money, so money, on its side, like the radical

leveller that it is, does away with all distinctions. — Karl Marx, Capital , 1867.

