| 'Modern
economic development as a whole tends more and more to transform capitalist
society into a giant international gambling house, where the bourgeois wins
and loses capital in consequence of events which remain unknown
to him... The 'inexplicable' is enthroned in bourgeois society as in a gambling
hall... Successes and failures, thus arising from causes that are unanticipated,
generally unintelligible, and seemingly dependent on chance, predispose
the bourgeois to the gambler's frame of mind... The gambler, however,...
is a supremely superstitious being. The habitues of gambling casinos always
possess magic formulas to conjure the Fates.
The inexplicable in society envelops the bourgeois, as the inexplicable
in nature the savage.' Paul Lafargue Die Ursachen des Gottesglaubens,
1906. Konvolut O4, 1 |
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"The
ideal of the shock-engendered experience is the catastrophe. This becomes
clear in gambling: by constantly raising the stakes, in hopes of getting
back what is lost, the gambler steers towards absolute ruin".
Konvult O14, 4 |
| "He
leaves the Palais-Royal with bulging pockets, calls to a whore,
and once more celebrates in her arms the communion with number, in which
money and riches, absolved from every earthen weight, have come to him like
a joyous embrace returned to the full. For in gambling hall and bordello,
it is the same supremely sinful delight: to challenge fate in pleasure."
Konvolut O1, 1 |
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