Man has often made man himself, under the form of slaves, serve as the primitive material of money, but has never used land for that purpose.
 Karl Marx, Das Kapital (1867). copy citation

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Author Karl Marx
Source Das Kapital
Topic money purpose
Date 1867
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling
Weblink https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-...

Context

“Nomad races are the first to develop the money-form, because all their worldly goods consist of moveable objects and are therefore directly alienable; and because their mode of life, by continually bringing them into contact with foreign communities, solicits the exchange of products. Man has often made man himself, under the form of slaves, serve as the primitive material of money, but has never used land for that purpose. Such an idea could only spring up in a bourgeois society already well developed. It dates from the last third of the 17th century, and the first attempt to put it in practice on a national scale was made a century afterwards, during the French bourgeois revolution.” source