If, as I suspect, money in its various guises, developed at local
(perhaps regional) levels among people with shared common values, then
money is only capable of acting as a true store of value and unit of
exchange among people with the same social values (or else, how does
money reflect the differences in values of different societies?). In
other words, does money necessitate that those who use it must
necessarily share the same social measures of value?
This is a very interesting question. I am not an expert on Marx or on monetary history, but your theory seems intuitively appealing. The "universal" nature of money, either as medium of exchange or as store of value appear to be artificial creations (that need to be enforced by the military force of the state rather than being voluntarily accepted as social custom).
On a limited scale the value of a standard monetary unit for society is obvious and individual societies likely created their monetary systems on this basis. But I think any such system invariably fails to "scale" very well either for large geographical areas ( e.g. the so-called "purchasing power parity paradox" - even within the OECD world) or for too many comodities ("intellectual property"). It is of course in the interest of those with large accumulated stores of value to extend the reach of their unit of money as far as possible and if necessary enforce it with force. After a point it is this capitalist class that drives the universalisation of money irrespective of any societal benefits.
http://www-cepr.stanford.edu/papers/pdf/00-25.pdf
-raghu.
