Beyoncé’s grandchildren and their children’s children, as yet unborn, will all be rich. That’s a lot of brown children on your Forbes list, she sings. Her wealth is a grand redemption of a debt long unpaid. But it is not an untroubled triumph. Pay me in equity, pay me in equity, Beyoncé sings. Money is no substitute, really, for equity. And to be coronated queen under capitalism is to claim a domain that comes, as Marx put it, “dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt.”
