The Karl Marx Credit Card — When You’re Short of Kapital

Is it a tragedy? Is it a farce? In the land once called East Ger­many, in a town once called Karl-Marx-Stadta bank called Sparkasse Chem­nitz ran an online poll let­ting cus­tomers vote for images to place on their cred­it cards. And the hands-down win­ner was Karl Marx, an iron­ic pick giv­en that … well, you don’t need me to explain why.

In response to this selec­tion, Plan­et Mon­ey has encour­aged read­ers to post a tagline for the card on Twit­ter, using the hash­tag #marx­card. Here are a few of our favorites so far:

  • There are Some Things Mon­ey Can’t Buy. Espe­cial­ly If You Abol­ish All Pri­vate Prop­er­ty.
  • From each accord­ing to their abil­i­ty, to each accord­ing to his need. For every­thing else, there’s #Marx­card.
  • The Marx Card — Because Cred­it is the Opi­ate of the Mass­es.
  • The Karl Marx Mas­ter­Card — When You’re Short of Kap­i­tal

Got your own to sug­gest? cc: us on Twit­ter: @openculture

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read­ing Marx’s Cap­i­tal with David Har­vey (Free Course)


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Comments (9)
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  • Michael Bæk says:

    The Marx­Card — Das Kap­i­tal.

    (I’m not on Twit­ter.)

  • robin holmes says:

    Philoso­phers have only inter­pret­ed the world, in var­i­ous ways: the point, how­ev­er, is to change it. For all those who can’t be both­ered to do either ‚there’s always the Karl Marx Mas­ter­card.

  • Stephen Liss says:

    This brings to mind a TV com­mer­cial fea­tur­ing Fidel Cas­tro, who removes his beard with a Bic shaver, after which he remarks “Nice cap­i­tal­ist tool.”

  • Gavin Mooney says:

    If I were a Greek I’d be ask­ing: Should I use Marx­card or Euro­card or Drach­mac­ard?

    But beware! There are dif­fer­ent Engels to all such sto­ries.

  • TurtleShroom says:

    This is more iron­ic than an Earnesto the Butch­er (Che Guev­era) T‑shirt.

    I bet it’s a hit with the Occu­py Wall Street Crowd, though.

  • Chemnitzerin says:

    The peo­ple of Chem­nitz weren’t hap­py when the city’s name was changed to Karl-Marx-Stadt in 1952. They weren’t con­sult­ed about it. It just hap­pened because some bureau­crat in Berlin said it should. Inci­den­tal­ly, Marx him­self nev­er set foot in Chem­nitz and has no known links to the city. Many peo­ple in the DDR refused to acknowl­edge the name change and still insist­ed that their mail was addressed to whereve they lived in Chem­nitz. The con­se­quence was any let­ters addressed ‘Chem­nitz’ and not ‘Karl-Marx-Stadt’ often went unde­liv­ered by the postal ser­vice. The peo­ple were giv­en a ref­er­en­dum on the name of the city in April 1990 and vot­ed to change back to Chem­nitz. They also vot­ed to keep the head that still stands in the city cen­tre today. Appar­ent­ly, Ikea has put up some mon­ey for a restora­tion, so I’m expect­ing it to change into a foral sofa in the near future.

    Is the Karl-Marx-Cred­it-Card tragedy or farce? I would say it’s nei­ther. More like a lit­tle pay­back.

  • schmid91 says:

    The Karl-Marx head belongs to the city now. Its some­thing like a land mark and con­tributes to the city of Chem­nitz iden­tiy. I think this is the main aspect for the local bank Sparkasse Chem­nitz to bind its clients to the city itself and have a sym­bol­ic item the peo­ple are used to and have a con­nec­tion to.

  • Kalam says:

    Work­ers of the world unite…around Mas­ter­card!

  • Heather says:

    When you reach your spend­ing lim­it your card is marxed­out.

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