MONOLITH VOLUME XV: Bucks
Buying and selling have always been vital stocks. The exchange of goods for other goods allowed the subsistence of individuals and tribes. Easy and immediate, however, this method presented problems related on the one hand to the trust relationships between the parties, on the other to the temporal contiguity of the goods. Over time, direct barter turned into mediated barter where a third commodity acted as a “bridge value”: commodity money. This allowed not only to be able to expand the possibility of exchange beyond the contemporaneity of retrieval, but also to carry out indirect exchanges, in which more than two subjects exchanged goods without each time whoever delivered a good obtained in exchange an asset of their own interest directly from who received his. This “third commodity” was soon identified in well-defined processing of some metals, the best known of which is gold. Money was therefore introduced with the task of functioning as a bridging value, making all products first of all truly interchangeable and in particular to allow the exchange of goods available at different times of the year. Money then evolved into a convertible money system.
But what do we really mean by the word money? A dense network of meanings begins to emerge before our eyes by dragging and composing the word in front of us: History. Reversals, conquests, riots to restore equality and others to repress it, wars and periods of peace, prosperity and misery, discoveries and shipwrecks.
Atense and vast diorama takes on consistency where the word subsistence returns incessantly to color the eras with ferocity. Social classes and intentions, desires and dreams, deprivations and actions aimed at conquering the necessary goods and excesses advance and grow by changing signs, transforming people, changing goods. Until today and at its apex, where the goods sell a daily psychodrama, a sign beyond the moral, the religious, the political. The goods before the man and beyond the goods. A Totem capable of replacing all worlds and which has the vocation to reveal everything, so that everything can be understood and desired but nothing can be loved.
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Ma cosa intendiamo realmente con la parola denaro? Una fitta rete di significati inizia ad emergere davanti ai nostri occhi trascinando e componendo davanti a noi la parola: Storia. Rovesciamenti, conquiste, rivolte per ripristinare l’uguaglianza ed altre per reprimerla, guerre e periodi di pace, prosperità e miseria, scoperte e naufragi.
Un diorama teso e vasto prende consistenza dove la parola sussistenza ritorna incessante per colorare con ferocia le ere. Classi sociali e intenzioni, desideri e sogni, privazioni e azioni volte alla conquista dei beni necessari e dell’eccedenza avanzano e crescono cambiando di segno, trasformando le persone, mutando i beni. Fino all’oggi e al suo punto apicale, dove la merce vende uno psicodramma quotidiano, un segno al di là della morale, del religioso, del politico. La merce prima dell’uomo e oltre la merce. Un Totem in grado di sostituire tutti i mondi e che ha la vocazione di svelare tutto, perché tutto si comprenda e si desideri ma niente si possa amare.
