Marx and fiat money

[Lance Murdoch <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

After several unsuccessful stabs at starting Marx's Capital, I have
finally made it through a chapter or two.  I already have a problem
though, which is perhaps due to the age of the material.

Towards the end of Chapter 1, Marx makes it pretty clear that gold is a
commodity just like any other commodity.  But due to certain qualities
(it's homogeneity and so forth), it has become a universal commodity, it
has become money.  So this brings a question to my mind - well what about
nowadays?  In the USA we used fiat money ever since Auguest 15th, 1971.

So then I get to Chapter 2.  In one of the footnotes, Marx says

"Long before the economists, lawyers made fashionable the idea that money
is a mere symbol...This they did in the sycophantic service of the royal
power, supporting the right of the latter to debase the coinage, during
the whole of the Middle Ages, by the traditions of the Roman Empire and
the conceptions of money to be found in the Digest."

Marx seems to be saying in Chapters 1 and 2 of Capital that money is a
commodity like any other.  Thus if American fiat money truly were not
backed by a commodity with a certain magnitude of value, it is worthless.
Note Marx does not say that fiat money is historically impossible, as he
notes the pressure put by the state "power" on lawyers and economists to
claim that fiat money has worth.

So is this Marx's theory?  It would seem a tenet of Marxian thought that
fiat money is worthless (or at least that it would be implied that it is
backed by gold or some other commodity in an emergency, if not in actual
current legality).

-- Lance