Currency of Paper. Alex Kovacs

imprints upon those who had been present. Sensing the scale of the mass of rooms surrounding him, he considered the silences of the libraries, the academic offices holding bookcases and dishevelled piles of papers, the scientific laboratories and hospital wards and the residencies of eminent families. He wanted to be a part of this manic activity.

      Nearby, a pullulating cloud of wood smoke emerged from the back garden of a house, drifting over the brick walls, winding itself into the grey air hanging over the stretches of lawns and pavements, seeping into Maximilian’s nostrils, a scent which was destined to stay with him for the duration of his days.

A Short Essay Written by the Protagonist

       (1951)

      1. The conditions are now in place for capitalism to flourish once more. Inevitably it will do so, escalating further and further, until we finally face collapse.

      2. The task now for anyone with any sensitivity and intellect should be to oppose this state of affairs in any way that they can.

      3. The consequence of a society that places money at its centre is that forms of mental and physical slavery come to dominate human life.

      4. Certain forms of expenditure are undoubtedly for the public good. Nevertheless, all that is moral in such cases is the intention that lies behind a given act of spending and the performance of that act. Sums of money cannot become moral in and of themselves.

      5. Finally, money is impossible to define. It appears in such a vast range of contexts, being utilised for so many different reasons, that any objective explanation of its ultimate character becomes elusive to those who seek it.

      6. The vast majority of ways in which money circulates have enormously destructive consequences. Human relationships inevitably suffer as a result, becoming insipid, superficial, mechanical reductions of what is possible. Tenderness is rarely achieved on the scale it could be because individuals are trapped within the structures of employment. In the current system most human beings have little knowledge of the full spectrum of the emotional and intellectual vocabulary that the species is capable of achieving.

      7. Paradoxically, the only way for anyone to overcome the punishing effects of a world dominated by money is for them to acquire a large amount of money for themselves. Otherwise, different forms of poverty and slavery will ensue.

      8. Money, considered from one perspective, can be seen as an enormous collection of numbers, somewhat arbitrarily selected by fate.

      9. The usual ways in which money circulates are routinely accepted by society as the proper state of affairs. Given such an absence of reason, certain acts usually condemned as immoral have the potential to become moral if performed for the right reasons. Certain forms of larceny and fraud fall into this category.

      10. Any free-thinking individual must do everything within their power to escape the obscene working conditions that prevail in the free-market system. This is equivalent to, and no less imperative than, for example, fleeing your country because it has descended into war.

      11. Certain acts of labour are necessary and society must acknowledge those who perform them. That this acknowledgment must be financial in nature is an assumption whose basis in reality has not yet been demonstrated to any satisfactory extent.

      12. When money is the sole objective of an action, a certain degree of idiocy is inevitable.

      13. Money shows its true face in the context of mass production. There, it becomes clear that money necessarily poisons all that it touches.

      14. Every advertisement could be replaced with a work of art.

      15. The state requires that an individual be in possession of a certain amount of the currency that it has itself created and controlled the distribution of. The only moral argument for such an arrangement is that it would seem to encourage an individual to contribute a certain amount of his or her labour to society. However, one may nonetheless obtain money through means no less legal but in no way related to the performance of labour as it has been thus far defined. No limits have been placed upon these means, or those who exploit them.

      16. If Members of Parliament wish to order millions of people to “participate in the national economy,” then it is surely only fair that they should themselves contribute a certain number of hours of labour to the “necessary” factories, offices, and kitchens that they have forced into existence.

      17. There is no good reason for governments not to introduce the concept of a “maximum wage” into law, with the parallel dictum of a “minimum wage” existing at a level not far underneath. The result would be societies of relative material equality in which both excessive wealth and poverty would have no place.

      18. The horror of menial work as currently practised should not be underestimated. To spend forty hours a week or more engaged in unceasing cycles of senseless repetition, as do most human beings, is a destructive form of existence for anyone to have to endure.

      19. In a more just and sane society it would be compulsory to partake in forms of whichever necessary menial work existed, distributing the quotas of such work fairly, whilst simultaneously providing the opportunity for educational and creative pursuits on a no less equal basis.

      20. Throughout its history, money has been synonymous with anxiety, intolerance, selfishness, anger, mistrust, and, of course, greed. That these states of mind are considered necessary consequences of the economic system in which we live is simply unacceptable. No system predicated upon such emotions can be considered salutary or, indeed, rational.

      21. Money is the great patterning and organizing force in the world. It shapes the narratives within which most of us must live; it dictates the ways in which our bodies move and speak and think, thereby excluding an infinity of possible subjects and stances. We should attempt to challenge and overthrow these narratives.

I Promise to Pay the Bearer

       (1952–1998)

      Merely setting foot in the Dagenham printing works each morning was an activity that soon became loathsome to Maximilian. The proprietor of the business, one Mr. Bradley, was a corpulent white-haired man who was often engaged in the act of wiping sweat away from his forehead with a handkerchief. Most working days would see him sitting in his little office, fiddling around with figures in his notebook, or, simply, doing as little as he possibly could. Occasionally he would emerge from hiding in order to attend to his workers, frequently shouting abuse at them with a booming, guttural voice that challenged the roar and whir of the machinery by which they all were dominated.

      In the evenings, Maximilian would shuffle back to his room, his clothes and hands covered with ink, his limbs aching from the day’s boredoms and exertions, his mind exhausted and spent. When in this state, he was barely capable of any intellectual activity at all. Slumping on his bed, dejected, he would stare vacantly up at the ceiling, following the elaborate maze of cracks gradually forming there. Lighting a cigarette, he would watch the smoke rise and curl into spirals before him as he attempted to marshal energies he usually found he no longer possessed.

      After spending a couple of months teaching himself how to pick locks, Maximilian began to break into the printing works in the middle of the night. He was working on a private project, a pursuit which kept him almost as busy as his “real” work: learning the art of counterfeiting. It was only through counterfeiting that he saw any likelihood of obtaining freedom. In all, he spent just over a year breaking into the works, entirely between the hours of two and four A.M. on weekday evenings only, hours when he was certain to encounter no one, but which were nevertheless wracked with paranoia and adrenaline. Returning to the building later in the morning, he would fight through waves of exhaustion, doing his best to pretend that he was alert and attentive.

      Once he felt assured of his abilities as a counterfeiter, he began to produce an enormous quantity of currency