The credit system ... accelerates the material development of the productive forces and the creation of the world market ... At the same time, credit accelerates the violent outbreaks of this contradiction, crises, and with these elements the dissolution of the old mode of production.

The credit system has a dual character immanent in it: on the one hand it develops the driving force of capitalist production, enrichment through the exploitation of others’ labor, into the purest and most colossal system of gambling and swindling, and restricts ever more the already small number of the exploiters of social wealth; but on the other hand, it establishes the form of transition to a new mode of production.