Hitch 22

by Christopher Hitchens

When that shutter clicked in Paris I was working and hoping for the overthrow of capitalism. As I sat down to set this down, having done somewhat better out of capitalism than I had ever expected to do, the financial markets had just crashed on almost the precise day on which I became fifty-nine and one-half years of age, and thus eligible to make use of my Wall Street–managed “retirement fund.” My old Marxism came back to me as I contemplated the “dead labor” that had been hoarded in that account, saw it being squandered in a victory for finance capital over industrial capital, noticed the ancient dichotomy between use value and exchange value, and saw again the victory of those monopolists who “make” money over those who only have the power to earn it. It was decidedly interesting to have become actuarially extinct in the last quarter of the very same year that saw me “written off” in the more aesthetic and literary sense as well.