The Mystical Force of Money

Abstract

hen Marx broaches the question of money in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 he does not turn to the political economists for an explanation, as one might expect, but rather to the poets and playwrights. In a reading of William Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens Marx tells us that “Shakespeare excellently depicts the real nature of money.”1 The play follows the decent of Lord Timon from riches to wretchedness as usurers redeem their debts and exhaust the Lord’s estate. As the play unfurls, Timon undergoes a traumatic transformation from a kind hearted and compassionate aristocrat to seething misanthrope. Timon is exiled from Athens and takes shelter in the forest outside the city. Then, in a twist of fate, he stumbles upon a new found fortune. Lord Timon ironically proclaims “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...”2 Marx quotes from this scene in the Manuscripts and suggests that money, the real nature of money, appears replete with its many magical powers. Money makes possible a universal exchange of both tangible objects that meet each other in the marketplace as well as the intangible human qualities such as courage, beauty, intelligence, etc. Timon himself displays all these qualities when he is wealthy and their opposites when he is poor. We discover in the money-form King Midas incarnate: it transforms all that it touches so that one who possesses money takes on the qualities of money itself. The universal exchange crushes difference and reduces all to a single denomination. In the Manuscripts Marx’s writes “what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality.”3 The money-form sets the limits and bounds of one’s own horizon. “If I have no money for travel” Marx’s writes, “I have no need for travel...If I have the vocation for study but no money for it, I have no vocation for study.”4 The singularity of money, he argues, becomes the sole delimiting factor for social, cultural and economic relationships.