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1 " Finally, the inner accessibility and reflectiveness of theoretical knowledge which cannot basically be withheld from anybody, as can certain emotions and volitions, has a consequence that directly offsets its practical results. In the first place, it is precisely because of their general accessibility that factors quite independent of personal capacities decide on the factual utilization of knowledge. This leads to the enormous preponderance of the most unintelligent 'educated' person over the cleverest proletarian. The apparent equality with which educational materials are available to everyone interested in them is, in reality, a sheer mockery. The same is true of the other freedoms accorded by the liberal doctrines which, though they certainly do not hamper the individual from gaining goods of any kind, do however disregard the fact that only those already privileged in some way or another have the possibility of acquiring them. For just as the substance of education - in spite of, or because of it general availability - can ultimately be acquired only through individual activity, so it gives rise to the most intangible and thus the most unassailable aristocracy, to a distinction between high and low which can be abolished neither (as can socioeconomic differences) by a decree or a revolution. Thus it was appropriate for Jesus to say to the rich youth: 'Give away your goods to the poor', but not for him to say: 'Give your education to the underprivileged'. There is no advantage that appears to those in inferior positions to be so despised, and before which they feel so deprived and helpless, as the advantage of education. For this reason, attempts to achieve practical equality very often and in so many variations scorn intellectual education. This is true of Buddha, the Cynics, certain currents in Christianity, down to Robespierre's 'nous n'avons pas besoin de savants'. In speech and writing - which, viewed abstractly, are a manifestation of its communal nature - makes possible its accumulation, and, especially, its concentration so that, in this respect, the gulf between high and low is persistently widened. The intellectually gifted or the materially independent person will have all the more chances for standing out from the masses the larger and more concentrated are the available educational materials. Just as the proletarian today has many comforts and cultural enjoyments that were formerly denied to him, while at the same time - particularly if we look back over several centuries and millennia - the gulf between his way of life and that of the higher strata has certainly become much deeper, so, similarly, the rise in the general level of knowledge as a whole does not by any means bring about a general levelling, but rather its opposite. "
― Georg Simmel , The Philosophy of Money
2 " The exchangeability that is expressed in money must inevitably have repercussions upon the quality of commodities themselves, or must interactwith it. The disparagement of the interest in the individuality of acommodity leads to a disparagement ofindividuality itself. If the two sidesto a commodity are its quality and its price, then it seems logicallyimpossible for the interest to be focused on only one of these sides: forcheapness is an empty word if it does not imply a low price for a relativegood quality, and good quality isan economic attraction only for acorrespondingly fair price. And yet this conceptual impossibility is psychologically real and effective. The interest in the one side can be sogreat that its logically necessary counterpart completely disappears. Thetypical instance of one of these cases is the ‘fifty cents bazaar’. Theprinciple of valuation in the modern money economy finds its clearestexpression here. It is not the commoditythat is the centre of interest herebut the price—a principle that in former times not only would have appeared shameless but would have beenabsolutely impossible. It has beenrightly pointed out that the medieval town, despite all the progress itembodied, still lacked the extensive capital economy, and that this was thereason for seeking the ideal of the economy not so much in the expansion(which is possibly only through cheapness) but rather in the quality of the goods offered; hence the great contributions of the applied arts, therigorous control of production, the strict policing of basic necessities, etc.Such is one extreme pole of the series, whose other pole is characterized by the slogan, ‘cheap and bad’—a synthesis that is possibly only if we are hypnotized by cheapness and are not aware of anything else. The levelling of objects to that of money reduces the subjective interest first in their specific qualities and then, as a further consequence, in the objectsthemselves. The production of cheap trash is, as it were, the vengeance ofthe objects for the fact that they have been ousted from the focal point ofinterest by a merely indifferent means. "
3 " The idea that life is essentially based on intellect, and that intellect is accepted in practical life as the most valuable of our mental energies, goes hand in hand with the growth of a money economy. "
