John Key the Money Man

A lot of people on the left in NZ are mystified by the popularity of John Key. He has been caught out lying and cheating, hiding under
several ‘hats’ and generally faking it.

The explanation lies in his personal amorality, hypocrisy, and boorish behaviour. These are useful personality traits for a money trader, or more accurately the Money Man as personification of money. Key represents nothing but money and like money he is all show and no substance. To discover why a national leader is first and foremost a money man we have to trace the origins of money in capitalist society.

Money originates as a means of exchange and measure of value of commodities. Money may have value itself as a precious metal like gold because of the labour congealed in it, but today money itself is valueless and more importantly, worthless unless it can be exchanged for a commodity of value. Marx called the commodity a ‘mysterious’ thing because it is not what it appears to be. The labour required to make value is alienated and appears instead as a property of the commodity itself. Money takes this ‘upsidedownness’ and flaunts it. It masquerades as the source, repository and religion of value-in-itself.

It’s easy to see why famous prophets like Proudhon and Te
Whiti saw money rather than capitalist exploitation as the root of all evil. What they opposed was the upside down reality of capitalism which defined people by money.

Of course the world has to be turned right way up by overthrowing not only money and its political personification in Key, but the system of labour exploitation that is the beginning and end of it all. The world capitalist economy today is in big trouble because it cannot produce commodities profitably. The result is that money has become detached from the production of value and becomes what Marx called ‘fictitious capital’.

This is the money that Key represents, the fictional, worthless, valueless character of money as a fake equivalent of value. Because it cannot be exchanged for the real value produced by workers, it pretends that by speculating in land and existing commodity wealth it can artificially create value out of panicked shoppers. This is not value inflation it is price inflation that will burst sooner or later.

But to keep the pretence going that bankers pyramid schemes create value, the banking system needs a Money Man as political leader to push speculation in all existing values by printing money. He also tries to commodify everything from state owned assets to social services as private property so that the market can drive the price speculation that keeps pumping up the fictitious economy. Capitalism like climate is headed for collapse.

Are you ready? Boom Bang!