Pretty Money
Mikhail Epstein
Soviet money is rather pretty. Compared to America's stern and dreary currency, with its dark and moldy hue, Soviet money is as lively and many colored as the butterfly that lands on your hand only to take immediate wing, adorning the flowering meadows with its airy landings, its mergings with rainbow and petals. The first job of Soviet money—green, blue, red, and lilac, with delicately etched veins of color and subtly iridescent patterns—is to satisfy the aesthetic needs of its proprietor. These bills are so gratifying to own that it's difficult to part with them.
American money, by contrast, is so dull and monotonous that you want to get rid of it as soon as possible, trading it in for some bit of brightly colored and eye-catching merchandise that fills the shop windows. There isn't even a difference between a one and one hundred dollar bill, it's all the same sad green; but all around you the world is full of juicy, seductive colors, so go out and buy! Soviet money, of course, is far more attractive than the dull and dusty, crumpled goods that can be bought with it. Watch that hand, pulling out a blue or red bank note; suddenly it stops to compare this painted rainbow with the pile of dust, marketplace rubbish, which will be received in exchange for it. The rainbow goes back in the pocket.
Whether the producers of Soviet money intended on creating economic savings by aesthetic means is unclear: what is certain is that in practice Soviet currency itself proved to be considerably more valuable than the goods it could purchase, which in an odd way was the realization of the old dream, cherished by the classic theorists of Marxism; that of replacing commodity production. Of course, what these theorists had in mind was the replacement of money itself: what they got in reality was a system in which money took the place of goods and continues to supplant them with ever greater efficiency, so that the life of the average Soviet citizen today is akin to that flowering field full of flitting butterflies.
Nevertheless, no society can exist without some form of symbolic substance, a universal equivalent for all costs and values. Under capitalism this universal equivalent is paper money, purposely dull and worn. Under communism money resembles a woodcut in either pop or op-art style, artistic miniatures, which the national mint produces in ever greater numbers to satisfy the demand for pocket-size portraits of Lenin and views of the Kremlin.
So then what is communism's real money? What is the universal equivalent by means of which one can obtain authentic goods? This question has not been studied. A political economy of communism was never actually created, although an academic discipline with this name became part of the university curriculum. According to this discipline, the fundamental economic law of socialism was the ever greater ability to satisfy the growing spiritual needs of workers, or, more exactly:
to ensure the complete well-being and development of all members of society by means of the complete satisfaction of their constantly growing material and cultural needs, which will be achieved by the continuous growth and perfectioning of collective production on the basis of technical and scientific progress.[1]
These same criteria could of course be used to define the basic aesthetic, sexual or psychological laws of socialism as well, since these too are part of society's "growing needs."
As I see it, the failure to create a communist political economy was the result of the fact that under Soviet communism economy was merely the superstructure, while ideology, which under capitalism was the superstructure, became the base. According to Marx, in all prior stages of history, ideas did not develop by their own laws but merely reflected society's economic life. The Russian Revolution, however, managed to turn social life on its head. Now it was the economy that was deprived of its own laws, reflecting instead the stormy life of competing philosophical, political, aesthetic and other ideas. The idea that was victorious became law: first there was the requisitioning of farm produce, then taxes in kind, then industrialization, collectivization, amalgamation, decentralization, the flooding of the forests, and the draining of the seas. Apart from the alternation of these various ideas, which became ever more advanced and grandiose, the economy lacked any kind of regulatory principle.
If money, then, is the symbol of exchange in the trade of goods, what is the symbol of exchange in the trade of ideas? Obviously, it must be words — socialism's only authentic form of convertible currency. By trading words for words, by attaching verbal labels to real events, we make possible our own ideological enrichment and our enemies' ideological bankruptcy. The ideological value of various words can change: for instance, "internationalism," whose exchange rate at one time was extremely high, suddenly falls to the same level as stateless "cosmopolitanism," and documents marked with words like "homeland," "monument" and "patriotism" suddenly see a rise in their exchange value. They are like stocks and bonds, except that words are written on them instead of numbers; words with which power, work, and life itself can be purchased. Indeed, in the final analysis, words are the means by which one can gain access to the satisfaction of those ceaselessly growing needs mentioned above.
Words and money have a lot in common: concepts such as "inflation," "devaluation," "speculation," and "rising and falling exchange rate" can be applied to both of them. The fluid relationship between a sign and its meaning, or currency and its value, is an expression of this. It is in the interval separating them that the furious process of getting rich takes place. With the money made from the sale of one item, another item is bought. The ideological sign, rising in value, can be exchanged for an array of historical achievements that support the correctness of the idea, raising its exchange value and simultaneously altering the nation's fate. Victory in the Russian civil war was paid for in the currency of "internationalism," while the Great Patriotic War[2] was won using the exchange value of the sign "patriotism." We can determine the relative value of these signs in our day by contrasting the fact that in contemporary Russian the word "civil" is written with a small letter while "Patriotic" is capitalized.
The basic difference between money and words is that the former is used primarily to designate material values, the latter ideological values. However, the laws of exchange of these values, the laws governing the material bases of capitalism and the ideological bases of communism, are more or less the same.
Marx is generally credited with having elucidated the formula of capitalist exchange: "commodity — money — commodity" or "money — commodity — money." In this exchange the commodity is obtained at one price and sold at another. A similar formula is at work under communism, although using a different set of terms: "event — word — event" or "word — event — word." The value of one and the same event can rise in our estimation, revealing "ideological commitment"; or it can fall, revealing "idealism." We can speculate on the rising value of our stock and the falling value of our opponent's stock. Thus his "fighters" are always "aggressors," while our "aggressors" are always "fighters." Those unlucky guerrillas, living in the heat and rain of the jungles, are in one instance nothing more than "criminal bands"; while in another, they are "patriots" and the "insurgent vanguard."
Language is a system of shifting appraisals, of rising and falling prices, a semantic stock exchange that allows the adroit player to accumulate vast amounts of ideological capital to be used for guaranteeing the infallibility of one's historical outlook. For instance, how can one argue with the statement that "The October Revolution liberated the toiling masses," while "the Nazi putsch hurled the German people into a calamitous abyss"? Clearly, a "revolution" is one thing, a "putsch" something altogether different. You can't argue with language. By attaching different labels to similar events, the ideologue confers on himself the ability to determine their differing values. While a "putsch" brings loss and destruction, a totally negative value, "revolution" is the winning ticket, and includes—free of charge—a grant that can be paid back over the next seventy years.
Capitalism governs its citizens with the check, communism with the Cheka.[3] The difference between the two, as can be seen, boils down to an extra letter and to the capitalization of the Russian word. Communism loves capital letters, indeed it lives off the profit that capitals earn in such words as Homeland, October, Communist Party. The significance of the word surpasses its meaning — this is what surplus value is under communist rule. Its chief law is the surplus value of all events: these events do not simply "happen" but reveal supreme historical laws and anticipatory tendencies.
What was the significance of the free repairs performed on three steam engines by fifteen workers at the Sortirovichnaya Depot in Moscow on April 12, 1919? In an historical sense, almost none at all. However, Lenin used his pen to deem this bit of voluntary labor a "great event" and then later turned the idea into a multi-billion ruble enterprise of free communist ideological labor.[4]
Thus the beauty of Soviet money is not at all to be found in its picturesque bank notes, which in essence prove to be something altogether different from money. Soviet money is the most beautiful in the world because it is made of bitter and joyous words, not dry numbers. With Soviet money you obtain comrades, not commodities.
Imagine a world plastered with bank notes that have ceased to proclaim vulgar sums but rather words of power and freedom. Beautiful, sonorous Soviet words: "revolution" and "reaction," "the people" and "freedom," "honor and glory," "spirituality," "materialism," "heroism," "petty bourgeois," "sacrifices," and "the radiant future." My God, what couldn't be obtained with these words? Something that can't be bought with any currency. Let us put aside for the moment all talk of quantity; let us discuss only quality. What can be obtained with these words is souls: human souls striving for the open air of the radiant future, hating all that is vulgar. What can be obtained with them is the incredible power of progress, which can withstand reaction of all and any stripe. The youth of the world and the lucid strength of the poet can be obtained with them.
Pitiful, capitalist money, that can only buy what is for sale: commodities! Happily, there exists on this earth a kind of money that buys what is not for sale. An immaterial money, which can buy the whole world. We don't know whether the world will be saved by beauty. But it has already been proven that the world can be bought with pretty money.
January 1991
Transl. Thomas Epstein
[1] SSSR. Entsiklopedicheskii spravochnik. Glavnyi redaktor A.M. Prokhorov. M, "Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya," 1982, p. 203.
[2] The Soviet Russian term for the Second World War. (translator's note.)
[3] The Soviet secret police.
[4] This is the foundation for the Leninist institution of the subbotnik (from the Russian word for Saturday), or voluntary unpaid labor performed for the benefit of the community or State. The subbotnik was considered part of communist ideological training.