F1 Ra.One Bar One

Amit Sengupta

...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 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...
Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Capitalism is an infinite race on the fast track. The faster you run, the more stationary you are. In backward capitalism, as in India with its equally infinite poverty line, with a deadly cocktail of neoliberal affluence and archaic remains of feudalism, it is like a patient constantly in need of ecstatic drugs and quick painkillers. It's the addiction of an artificial high, driven by the insatiable greed for money, more money, profit, more profit, more ecstasy and excitement; the more you have it, the less you are; the more you possesses, the less you become.

It is infinite, this thirst, like a multi-storied building which goes up in the sky like a rope trick and never ends, and you don't know which floor you must sleep in to be closest to heaven, to god, to divinity. Money makes you feel like god, you are god, and godliness flows like the death wish of an obsessive
social climber; the higher you go, the more distant you are from the next peak.

From the print issue of Hardnews : 
NOVEMBER 2011