magicians are political -- philosophical interlude 2

• Magicians are political

• There is an injustice concealed within the justice of the marketplace, since a promise rigorously kept is itself a trap. The two way dealing of buyer and seller works only because of a two-way deception; for each of them always pretends that he has no need of the other.

• The same god who will run to the marketplace tomorrow, the one who will ring the opening of the stock exchange; the god of the closing and the final bid; the god who posts under his own name the just prices which are never just.

• Without the noise of the street vendors nothing would get done and nothing would be thought.

These fragments come from Alain (Emile-Auguste Chartier), The Gods