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Years ago my dearest friend (yo) visited Karl Marx’s home town of Trier, in Germany, and brought me back a zero-euro bill. I carry it in my wallet always. It is a convincing counterfeit, with the feel of « real » currency — that money feel, a paper of linen and cotton rather than wood pulp. It is a bit faded and wrinkled now.

The zero-euro bill — a fetish of a fetish, a commodified meta-fetish — proves the adage that parody is the sincerest form of flattery. But it shows some cracks, too, despite itself. It might stir a nostalgia-in-advance in an era of odious crypto-currency; or a salutary doubt in the cold « cashless society » toward which we have been steer

  1. Capital, Volume 1. ↩︎

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    No one would have understood both the sentiment and the absurdity more keenly than Marx himself, whose face has adorned real currencies in more countries than anyone else’s, with the possible exception of Elizabeth II.

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