SAMUEL WEBERThe cult of an indebted and guilty deity that must be worshiped unremittingly and yet,
by virtue of its immaturity, must also be kept secret requires a surrogate in which indebt-
edness and the promise of redemption are credibly merged. This surrogate must be recog-
nizable in its singularity and yet at the same time endowed with a durability, a constancy,
a permanence that no singular being can hope to attain so long as it is merely alive. It is
this capacity to endure in and through a certain circulation that provides the basis of the
comparison—theVergleichthat does not establish simple equality (Gleichheit) but only a
likeness—between ‘‘pictures of saints of different religions’’ and the ‘‘ornamentality of
banknotes of different states.’’ The pictures of saints depict the mortality of singular living
beings whose sanctity, however, turns mortality into a promise of redemption. The orna-
mental designs of modern banknotes, by contrast, reinscribe the pictures of individuals,
living or dead, in a context that is not merely representational but allegorical, in the sense
that Benjamin, a few years later, in his studyOrigin of the German Mourning Play, was to
demarcate sharply from the symbolic by virtue of allegory’s nonimmanent, discontinuous,
andnever entirely visiblemode of signification.^25 In this sense, allegory reckonswith the
Lutheran doctrine ofsola fides and its critique of the redemptive power of ‘‘good
works’’—andcountersit as well. It takes it into account by ‘‘ornamentalizing’’ all manifest
likeness, including the likeness of the image of man to his creator (and redeemer). It
counters it by treating its images aslegible.Their problematic legibility, however, is appar-
ently rendered calculable in the relation of ornamentality to monetary value, always made
explicit—and hence legible—by numbers. In this way, the ornamentality of banknotes
links the ‘‘faith’’ ofsola fidesto a system of calculablecreditthat ismeasured numerically
butmanifestedthrougheffigies. As with the pictures of saints, however, what those effigies
signify is that in the cult-religion of capitalism, the hope of redemption will henceforth
be inseparable from the medium of circulation, which renders every ‘‘one’’ equal to every
other ‘‘one’’ in order to render calculable the ‘‘bottom-line’’ of the balance sheet. The
‘‘myth’’ of ‘‘money’’ that informs the capitalist cult thus becomes the historical heir to
the redemptive promise of Christianity. To spend is to save—and to be saved! ‘‘Datsun
saves!’’^26
Let me conclude—or rather, break off—with a question. With respect to Plato’s em-
phasis on democracy as more (and less) than just a form of government or the name of a
constitution, Derrida notes that ‘‘in addition to the monarchic, plutocratic, and tyrannical
democracies of antiquity,’’ a number of other types of political regimes claiming to be
democracies have arisen in the modern period. Among these he lists ‘‘parliamentary de-
mocracy (whether presidential or not),’’ ‘‘constitutional monarchy’’ working in tandem
with parliamentary democracy, ‘‘popular democracy,’’ ‘‘liberal democracy, Christian de-
mocracy, social democracy, military or authoritarian democracy,etc.’’ (27 / 49). What,
however, of this ‘‘etc.’’? Does it, for instance, include, stand for, or conceal ‘‘economic
democracy,’’ and if so, in what way? Does it include it as a mere extension of all the other
variations of democracy that seek to name themselves properly, in the present, with
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