The power of money

 

Acima, a sala de leitura do Museu Britânico de Londres, onde Karl Marx passou mais de cinco anos se dedicando a escritura do primeiro volume d'O Capital.

Karl Marx era apaixonado pela literatura clássica, um dedicado leitor que lia toda tarde Shakespeare para seus filhos. Notem a perspicácia nos Manuscritos econômico e filosóficos para tratar da natureza real do dinheiro:

By possessing the property of buying everything, by possessing the property of appropriating all objects, money is thus the object of eminent possession. The universality of its property is the omnipotence of its being. It is therefore regarded as an omnipotent being. Money is the procurer between man’s need and the object, between his life and his means of life. But that which mediates my life for me, also mediates the existence of other people for me. For me it is the other person.

“What, man! confound it, hands and feet / And head and backside, all are yours! / And what we take while life is sweet, / Is that to be declared not ours? / “Six stallions, say, I can afford, / Is not their strength my property? / I tear along, a sporting lord, / As if their legs belonged to me.”

Goethe: Faust - Mephistopheles

Shakespeare in Timon of Athens:

“Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold? / No, Gods, I am no idle votarist!... / Thus much of this will make black white, foul fair, /  Wrong right, base noble, old young, coward valiant. / ...Why, this / Will lug your priests and servants from your sides, / Pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads: / This yellow slave / Will knit and break religions, bless the accursed; / Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves / And give them title, knee and approbation / With senators on the bench: This is it / That makes the wappen’d widow wed again; / She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores / Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices / To the April day again. Come, damned earth, / Thou common whore of mankind, that put’st odds / Among the rout of nations.”

And also later:

“O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce / ‘Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler / Of Hymen’s purest bed! thou valiant Mars! / Thou ever young, fresh, loved and delicate wooer / Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow / That lies on Dian’s lap! Thou visible God! / That solder’st close impossibilities, / And makest them kiss! That speak’st with every tongue / To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts! / Think, thy slave man rebels, and by thy virtue / Set them into confounding odds, that beasts / May have the world in empire!”