Friday, June 17, 2016

Today in Capitalist Irony

Anything can become a commodity fetish:
A rare presentation first edition of Karl Marx’s seminal work, Das Kapital, inscribed by the author and given to Johann Eccarius, the close friend with whom he fell out and who may have betrayed him, sold at Bonhams Fine Books and Manuscripts sale in London on June 15 for £218,500.

1 comment:

G. Verloren said...

I'm not quite sure it can be called irony - or at least not capitalist irony.

If your philosophy is "everything has a price", I'm not sure how putting a price on something - even something representative of an opposing philosophy - is anything other than a validation of your philosophy.

If there's any irony here, I think it must be communist irony, in that a product of the communist philosophy has ended up being subsumed by capitalist forces. One would expect an icon of communism to end up being publically owned by the people, not privately owned by an individual.