As we consider lives that are caught in the maw of the economic meltdown, read the following story: "Humbled banker parts with yuppie past."
With so many jobs in the financial sector being lost, perhaps we should reflect on the value of jobs tied to trading in money. The kind of dissolution experienced by the loan officer referenced in the CNN story was predicted by Karl Marx in "The Power of Money," in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844:
"That which is for me through the medium of money – that for which I can pay (i.e., which money can buy) – that am I myself, the possessor of the money. The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power. Money’s properties are my – the possessor’s – properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness – its deterrent power – is nullified by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame. I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honoured, and hence its possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good. Money, besides, saves me the trouble of being dishonest: I am therefore presumed honest. I am brainless, but money is the real brain of all things and how then should its possessor be brainless? Besides, he can buy clever people for himself, and is he who has [In the manuscript: ‘is’. – Ed.] power over the clever not more clever than the clever? Do not I, who thanks to money am capable of all that the human heart longs for, possess all human capacities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their contrary?
If money is the bond binding me to human life, binding society to me, connecting me with nature and man, is not money the bond of all bonds? Can it not dissolve and bind all ties? Is it not, therefore, also the universal agent of separation? It is the coin that really separates as well as the real binding agent — the [. . .] chemical power of society." (Marx)
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2 comments:
People need to stopletting money affect their personaitly and self image so much, just let it make life easier.
His situation seems atypical in this 20th century economic crisis. He calls the experiance humbling but that just means in his next venture when the market lifts itself he will be more cautious, he won't walk past the industry that he knows can give him what he once had. Marx says money is powerful because it is that which makes our desires effective in that money leads to the realization of our desired objects, without it they do not exist for us. So when he tells his daughter another time he knows at this moment his lack of money leads this object she asks for to be obslete. However this euphamism for "no" reveals that he like many sadly, sees no revalation about the value of money in the long term, simply that in the moment he must do only that which the amount of money he now has allows him too. Thanks for pointing out that Marx excerpt, his writing is extremely relevant to American culture today.
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