I have just come across some useful unpublished discussion of the nature of
capitalist money by a sociologist (Geoffrey Ingham, Christ's College,
Cambridge). He refers at this point to Keynes' "Treatise ...", and Simmel's "The
Philosophy of Money". He says 'money is the abstract "value" BY which
commodities are exchanged, not the value FOR which they are exchanged as in
commodity-theory'. The point (after Simmel, and like Paul?) is that money is
crucially a unit of account - but no 'merely' about it ('one of the greatest
advances made by mankind' Simmel: 136).
Comradely ...
Michael