written 2009
(essay)
(essay)
...“I entirely agree with both of you – with you, Viktor, and with you, Mr Queensley. In my opinion the banks, as the toolkit of capital, have changed the meaning of the concepts and have themselves become the personification of capital, i.e. have failed to distance themselves to the extent necessary from the misapprehensions of members of society in relation to the rectitude of the social structure, but have done everything to reinforce misapprehension of this kind, thereby creating some semblance of a false (as we see it) but powerful ‘religion’. And in the process the bankers of today, like the bishops of the Middle Ages, have overrun the whole world and are engaged in very active recruitment to their faith – these days they are the true world rulers.”
No sooner had I finished than Viktor began to speak again.
“It seems obvious to me that the banks have perpetrated a change in the semantics of definitions, and from a straightforward centre for the interaction of finance, i.e. facilitating life for society, they are now trying make themselves a substitute for the very idea of commercial relations in society. It should never be forgotten that money is, above all else, the equivalent of labour or MEDIATED commodity value. But today the banks, by creating their own laws of banking activity and levying payments for this, that and the other operation, are turning money into their own means of production, having forgotten, besides other things, that they are, above all, no more than authorised centres for carrying out cash settlement activity for a society’s economic system or the infrastructure of social provision. In their time they have been mere cash desks, depositaries and safes. And they should remain cash desks, but they have gradually started to take hold of and bring under their influence ever greater assets to ensure their own continued existence, through the expansion of their control over the global economy. In the end, having repeatedly valued and re-valued everything around us, they have expanded their control over society to the extent that many more specialists have been needed to support them. They have started recruiting them, or taking them on, almost by dragging them off the streets. And now that these poorly educated people, ‘single operation specialists’, can no longer produce results (elementary overproduction), the crisis has affected the entire realm of business, and not only where economics is concerned. But how can this be so, why should simple people be at fault in this, i.e. in the way the banks have got into politics because politicians no longer think of their activity as being outside this doxa, the doxa that all banks are now propagandising. This unconscious trust in the bank, by whom or what has it been established?
“Through the media. By means of the subconscious. How many films have been made about banks, about money? I am certain that we lost count ages ago. But, you know, it all sinks into our heads as a stereotype, and into the heads of our children, establishing unconscious, absolute trust; for example, certain recent films about freestylers or surfers that apparently have no direct connection with the world of finance. The loose shorts of the main hero always display an indispensable attribute, the plastic bank card, nattily encased in waterproof laminate. It is essential that the card should be seen. It goes without saying that wherever you are tossed by the waves of the sea or the storms of life, there will be a cash machine for you, as a fundamental prerequisite. The cash machine as saviour supplies everything you need: warmth, care and relaxation. With a System X payment card you are always ‘on a roller’. It is of no account that in reality seawater will very rapidly, perhaps within ten minutes, ‘eat’ the magnetic strip on your plastic card. What does matter is that true freedom is thought of these days as impossible without a plastic card and a cash machine. Or take another scene from a film: the public cutting up of a credit card as it is destroyed because there is no money to back it up. In the eyes of the people who are witnesses, this has the appearance of a public execution. What are the terrors engendered in this way in the subconscious of the viewer, or what are they made to fear? Ask me why this occurs in precisely the way it does, easily and simply. I will answer that it is all very straightforward: a person can forget what they know and not believe what they hear, but what they see gets into a matrix in their subconscious and finds a cell there at once and for ever. This is the peculiar thing about human psychology: that once something has been seen it cannot be consigned to the chaos of non-existence. These days many people find it generally simpler to believe in what cannot be achieved than to analyse what has already taken place. Falsehoods about the future and the past are more readily believed than the truth about the present.
“And, what is more, these modern specialists in selling DVD images of thinking and creators of lifestyles have now reached the point where they compete with each other over who gets the highest fees from premiere screenings. The bigger the box office the more modern and powerful the technological background used in conditioning the brain of the member of the audience, the person who is willing to pay out of his own pocket for the right to be in the flock when its fleeces are shorn. And when an upstanding member of society emerges from the cinema he is bound to check the balance on his credit card and top it up just in case, for his peace of mind. When a teenager is choosing surfing gear in the sports shop, what will he go for? He may not yet have his plastic from the bank, but his shorts will certainly have part of the lining strengthened to hold a card.”
Following these words from Viktor, we all fell silent. I noticed that Mr Queensley was feeling cold, as was I. It turned out that in our enthusiasm for the conversation we hadn’t noticed that evening had approached and along with it, its chill....
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