Capital functions as the sublime irrepresentable Thing, present only in its effects, in contrast to a commodity, a particular material object which miraculously ‘comes to life’, starts to move as if endowed with an invisible spirit In one case, we have the excess of materiality (social relations appearing as the property of a pseudo-concrete material object); in the other, the excess of invisible speciality (social relations dominated by the invisible spectre of Capital). Today, with the advent of electronic money, the two dimensions seem to collapse: money itself increasingly acquires the features of an invisible spectral Thing discernible only through its effects.
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SLAVOJ ZIZEK, THE PLAGUE OF FANTASIES, PG 131
We live in a world of spiritually sickening economic and social inequality, a world whose progress toward the acknowledgment of common standards of toleration, individual liberty and human development has been depressingly slow and unsteady.”(1) “One thus gets an impression that civilization is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority which understood how to obtain possession of the means to power and coercion.”(2) “It is not that by this act possession, in changing hands, changes its nature and becomes property in the hands of the sovereign. But with regard to other powers, it is master only through the right of the first occupant, which it derives from the private individual.”(3) The individual “tries to establish over the other an alien power, so as thereby to find satisfaction of his own selfish need.” (4) “Individuals, who have to look after themselves, develop the ego as the instance of the reflective preliminary and general view; it is extended and contracted as the prospects of economic self-sufficiency and productive ownership extend and contract from generation to generation.” (5) “From all that has been said […], it follows that we must define [the typical debate in our society] as capitalism in transition, or, more precisely, as moribund capitalism.” (6)
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[1] Equality and Partiality, Thomas Nagel, Introduction pg.2 (OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1991)
[2] The future of an Illusion, Sigmund Freud, pg 6 (W.W. Norton & Company, 1961)
[3] On the Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, pg 56 (St. Martin’s Press, Inc. 1978)
[4] The Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Karl Marx, (The Meaning of Human Requirements) pg 147 (International Publishers, 1964)
[5] Dialectic of Enlightenment, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno,pg 87 (Continuum Publishing Company, New York, 2002)
[6] Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, V.I. Lenin, pg 126 (International Publishers, 1939)
