Second case: gold as analogical emissary in the digital world. With gradual surprise, we come to realize that the process that eliminates qualities, constantly referred to by Marx throughout Grundrisse and Das Kapital, is constantly being compared to the process of alchemy, which produces qualities. C-M-C and M-C-M (where C and M stand for “commodity” and “money”) are the economic translations of caput mortuum and quinta essentia, and money replaces the lapis: “It is exactly as if, for example, the chance discovery of a stone gave me mastery over all the sciences, regardless of my individuality.⁴⁹⁸ The possession of money places me in exactly the same relationship to wealth (social) as the philosophers’ stone would to the sciences.” Thus even here, on alien ground, gold maintains all its mighty array of solar and regal associations, as the vibrant center of a hierarchic system of correspondences. At the center of a neuter, undifferentiated and conventional place we find the most ancient splendor.

For century after century all things, all beings, appeared and moved about accompanied by their Double. At one time, indeed, the dominant presence was the Double, of which the individual being was a mere sign. Doubles then slowly began to fade, to dwindle. Finally they sought refuge in the nocturnal part of nature and let themselves be seen as sporadic and sinister presences. But new Doubles, of another species, began to spread. This species was exchange value, which multiplied and superimposed itself on the forms of all things. And there was indeed a Double that immediately transformed itself into a thing, without there being a corresponding body. This was money. And this peculiar lack of a body to which to attach itself gave it a longer life. “All commodities are perishable money; money is the imperishable commodity.”⁴⁹⁹

There are two movements:

a: All is usable material. The subject is a procedure. Absolute conventionalism. What acts is the void that fixes the terms of the experimentation. It marks out the object and works upon it.

b: All is associated. Universal interdependence. Resonance. Touching one element affects all its kin. But which are its kin? This implies an earlier wisdom, a canon of doctrine.

We cannot do without either of the two movements, in any of their forms. In the “tribal” phase (namely b), Marx takes the view that a is hidden, but is present and working away as an ineluctable corrosive. In the post-historical phase, only the action of a is recognized, while b leads a wild and clandestine life, but nevertheless radiates its power over everything.

Money is the sign of representing, the sign of predominance achieved by the system of representation (i.e., the system of convention, of substitution, of replacement, of interchangeability) over the system of correspondences (i.e., the system of analogy, of symbol [in the cultic sense], of nondiscursiveness, of association, of uniqueness). Marx’s discovery refers to this: to the transition of exchange value from peripheral and marginal power to primary and central power in the modern world, its transition to capital power. All forms of life now bear the mark of this process: everything is under the sign of exchange value. Once this transition and its implications have been fully understood, all talk about structures and superstructures is pure blabla (a word invented by Céline), ready for use in the Soviet Encyclopedia: there is no need whatsoever for a superstructure that corresponds to some kind of conditioning structure. It’s enough to say that all is under the sign of the exchange value, and that the exchange value is the economic name for a power that otherwise manifests itself in substitution, in convention, in representation in general, in all its various forms.