Trouble in paradise

By Victor Surge

I've always admired Karl Marx from afar. I was too shy to approach him in person, but I'd read stuff he wrote, sometimes I'd google his name to see what he was up to. Finally, one day I got the chance to meet him directly.

At first it was wonderful. It was like everything he said described my world exactly. But that was easy when he was talking in general. In retrospect, I think I had him on a pedestal. I would look deep into his dark eyes, or watch the movements of his beard when he spoke, and everything that was fuzzy before became clear. His passion, his deep longing for meaning - who wouldn't be taken in?

But the honeymoon period's starting to end, and now I'm noticing his faults. He's always talking about his colleagues at work, but they're never good enough for him, and he makes fun of them constantly. He calls them "romantic sycophants", says they combine "great self-importance with the mouthing of elementary commonplaces." It's funny to listen to, but what if he starts saying similar things about me? He likes to talk to me, but sometimes I feel that's so he can have an audience. He's so clever; at first that was endearing, but now it's getting annoying.

"Karl," I say to him, "Can't you just call a spade a spade? Tell me what it is?"

But no, everything has to be two things at once. "Just as, in every transmutation of a commodity, its two forms, the commodity-form and the money-form, exist simultaneously but at opposite poles, so every seller is confronted with a buyer, every buyer with a seller."

"Whatever," I reply. That just infuriates him, and he starts on his little word games that he knows I can't stand. "At one point money must be attracted as coin, at another time coin must be repelled at money."

"What?" I say. "Talk about one thing at once. Stop mixing up your words." But he just takes another bite of his biscotti (note to Karl: crumbs in the beard are not attractive) and gesticulates with it, telling me, "The buyer converts money back into commodities before he has turned commodities into money."

"Is it commodities or money? Make up your mind!" I tell him. He just says I'm being undialectical, and tries out equations on me. Now, I'm no slouch with numbers. You don't get to be a secretary without knowing how to make a spreadsheet. But I never got equations, not even in grade school. He knows this and talks one out instead:

If we now consider the total amount of money in circulation during a given period, we find that, for any given turnover rate of the medium of circulation and means of payment, it is equal to the sum of prices to be realized, plus the sum of the payments falling due, minus the payments which balance each other out, and, finally, minus number of circuits in which the same piece of coin serves alternately as medium of circulation and means of payment.

As if that makes it any better! He might as well just write:

T = S - D - BoP - C, where C = MoC + MoP

I bet you're thinking, "Huh?" Now, imagine having to have lunch with the guy every day!

There are lots of other theorists out there; I could be hooking up with Bakunin or Dewey or someone. Don't get me wrong, I still love him, and I won't drop him just because he's off in his own little world sometimes. But if this relationship is going to work, he's going to have to start talking to me, not at me.