“Look at a coin from your pocket. On one side is “heads” — the symbol of the political authority which minted the coin; on the other side is “tails” — the precise specification of the amount the coin is worth as payment in exchange. One side reminds us that states underwrite currencies and the money is originally a relation between persons in society, a token perhaps. The other reveals the coin as a thing, capable of entering into definite relations with other things.”
– Keith Hart, as quoted in David Graeber’s Debt
I don’t personally begrudge the next bundle of privileged little atoms soon to be squeezed out of Our recently royally anointed womb, but you know on the day The Royal Baby begins its life in this world I’ll be smelting coins, screaming profanities, and dreaming of a future in which the little sprog can reach into its pocket, and instead of being massaged by an endless stream of cash, printed with its own face, it will find them empty, save for the odd bit of fluff, just like the rest of us.
Because there’s never two sides to a coin for the person who takes up one of them.
Young Fathers’ TAPE TWO is out now on Anticon.
• Young Fathers: http://www.young-fathers.com
• Anticon: http://www.anticon.com
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