For Everything Else, There is MarxCard
June 17, 2012 1:26 PM   Subscribe

The German bank Sparkasse Chemnitz recently launched a Karl Marx credit card. It needs a tagline.
posted by vidur (52 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
Okay, this guy already wins:

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. For everything else, there's #marxcard

posted by Alex404 at 1:29 PM on June 17, 2012 [21 favorites]


"from each according to his volatility, to each according to his greed" has a nice ring to it
posted by nathancaswell at 1:35 PM on June 17, 2012 [3 favorites]


Zardoz!
posted by TwelveTwo at 1:40 PM on June 17, 2012


Das CreditKard
posted by pdxpogo at 1:43 PM on June 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


"Doublepoints for the doublethink."
posted by Tomorrowful at 1:45 PM on June 17, 2012 [2 favorites]


Unshackle your Euros. At 21% APR.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 1:48 PM on June 17, 2012 [3 favorites]


"I don't want to charge any card that will accept me as a member."
posted by griphus at 1:49 PM on June 17, 2012 [14 favorites]


"Showing Engels my face on the Mastercard-Priceless!"
posted by Isadorady at 1:50 PM on June 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


In the US you can get a customized Capital One card with the flag of the Soviet Union or East Germany. Marx's face is a nice touch though.
posted by graymouser at 1:53 PM on June 17, 2012


"Communism killed 100 million people and all I got was my face on a credit card."
posted by ZenMasterThis at 1:53 PM on June 17, 2012 [3 favorites]


Schweini!
posted by Beardman at 1:54 PM on June 17, 2012


A spectre is haunting Europe-the spectre of bad credit...but not any more with our new low interest rate credit card! Workers of the world unite all your purchases in an easy to manage monthly repayments.*

*You have nothing to lose but your credit rating.
posted by Jehan at 1:57 PM on June 17, 2012 [3 favorites]


Well since Chemnitz' name between 1953-1990 was Karl-Marx-Stadt, the result of the vote isn't that surprising is it?
posted by BonusMcGregor at 1:57 PM on June 17, 2012


Das Kapital One
Was ist in deinem Geldbeutel?

posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:59 PM on June 17, 2012 [4 favorites]


"When the Blood of the Workers isn't Enough...

...There is the MArxCard
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:01 PM on June 17, 2012 [3 favorites]


Je suis marxiste -- tendence Groucho.
posted by faustdick at 2:02 PM on June 17, 2012 [2 favorites]


The withering away of irony.
posted by Divine_Wino at 2:02 PM on June 17, 2012 [3 favorites]


Be patient. The red circle will inevitably eclipse the bourgeois orange circle.
posted by argonauta at 2:05 PM on June 17, 2012 [11 favorites]


21%? That IS almost Communist. For real market force(s), check out Adam Smith's Payday Loans.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:06 PM on June 17, 2012 [4 favorites]


Kampfen mit Klasse.
posted by klangklangston at 2:07 PM on June 17, 2012


The workers have nothing to lose but their discretionary income.
posted by Spatch at 2:18 PM on June 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


Seize the means of consumption!
posted by codacorolla at 2:25 PM on June 17, 2012 [13 favorites]


Also, from the NPR contest on Facebook, the wittiest caption I saw was easily "Finally you can be a card carrying communist!"
posted by codacorolla at 2:26 PM on June 17, 2012 [23 favorites]


"Finally you can be a card carrying communist!"

stop the fight! it's over. that one's great.
posted by nathancaswell at 2:33 PM on June 17, 2012 [2 favorites]


"In Soviet Russia, Das Capital owns you!" ?
posted by Decimask at 2:34 PM on June 17, 2012


You'll come for the tragedy -- you'll stay for the farce!
posted by Kinbote at 2:40 PM on June 17, 2012 [5 favorites]


Schuld macht frei?
posted by cmoj at 2:42 PM on June 17, 2012


Marxcard: the point is to charge it.

Perhaps a little too inside-baseball...
posted by yoink at 2:51 PM on June 17, 2012 [2 favorites]


"Communism killed 100 million people and all I got was my face on a credit card."

Not nearly as effective as capitalism.

Shopping on credit is the opium of the masses.
posted by pracowity at 2:57 PM on June 17, 2012 [6 favorites]


"So, I was wrong. Sue me."
posted by Ardiril at 3:03 PM on June 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


"According to my last royalty check, I am the 1%."
posted by Ardiril at 3:10 PM on June 17, 2012


All that was solid melts into air except KarlMarxCard. Profaning the holy since 2012.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:12 PM on June 17, 2012


Also, on the topic of cold war era communism being triumphantly consumed and colonized by capital...

A friend from college had a bachelor party which was perhaps searching for the archetypal bachelor party experience - strippers, gambling, drinking, and other low-class activities frowned upon by polite society. To accomplish this we went to what is one of the simultaneously most interesting and worst places I've ever been in my life: Atlantic City. We arrived at around 10 pm on Friday night, and there was a foul smelling fog creeping in from the ocean, shrouding the gaudy neon spectacle of the boardwalk. Other drunks and gamblers emerged from the fog like extras in a zombie film.

Throughout the weekend we went to various seedy places where you paid people to give you an experience - strippers to provide dehumanized sexuality, croupiers to give you a three second shot of endorphin as the dice rolled, bartenders to pour you an overpriced cup of booze. They were experiences I would never seek out by myself due to rationality or self respect, but being part of a herd in such a beguiling place made me give in and betray the better parts of myself.

It was a no-place, where the actual town (the place the experience providers supposedly lived their lives outside of the casino) was a crumbling facade with check cashing centers, convenience stores, and head shops. Even the casinos themselves were run down and shoddy. Like the back corner of the part of Trump's brain that'd been eaten away by bile and cocaine. The newest casino jutted out arrogantly in to the ocean, daring the next hurricane to smash it to bits.

It was a pure and honest expression of capitalism. You know that you're wasting your money, and in fact that's what they're selling. It's not even quite like Vegas, where there's the attempt to create a simulacrum of taste and worldliness by presenting empty concrete shells of better places. It's a brutal and ugly environment where you buy what you want to experience, and there's a hungry ecosystem of exploitation to suck the tip dollars out of you so that the bosses can rationalize paying their workers below a living wage.

Anyway, at the hotel we were staying at (the Tropicana) there were a few themed clusters of restaurants. A copy of an American small town main street with a deli and a pretzel shop, the 'fancy' section to stick the Palm chain store (where a braying table of bros drunkenly sang happy birthday three or four times at the top of their voices as the strained looking waiters grinned bravely for their tip money), and most amazingly a red square. A vodka bar with a towering statue of Lenin outside of it and overpriced vodka martinis within, a P.F. Chang's with its brazen orientalist dragon-lion statues, and Cuba Libre that has the admirable audacity to charge you sixty dollars for a mojito pitcher. You can see a picture of it here

I wondered if it was intentional. If it was some planned jibe by a Randian hotel planner, happily parading the victory of capital over its long dead enemies (well - P.F. Chang's is arguable, I guess). More likely, I figured, is that it was like everything else in Atlantic city, which is to say a poorly planned trap to extract money without much thought or meaning behind it. Regardless, it was surreal experience which does well to represent
the concepts of an ascendant neo-liberal ideology that has consumed or assimilated any external threat to its existence, and now has only itself to fight.
posted by codacorolla at 4:09 PM on June 17, 2012 [20 favorites]


Bring down Capitalism. From the inside.
posted by Rinku at 4:09 PM on June 17, 2012


Earn double points for debate class.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:29 PM on June 17, 2012


You're on your way to the lounge suite.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:31 PM on June 17, 2012 [2 favorites]


Das Kapital Now, Das Payment Later
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:53 PM on June 17, 2012 [7 favorites]


Was gonna write something witty that involved mistaking Karl Marx for Santa but I can't really think of anything, so this is all you get
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:00 PM on June 17, 2012


History repeats itself--first as 0% APR for the first six months, then as cash rewards.
posted by Cash4Lead at 5:07 PM on June 17, 2012 [4 favorites]


Well, I had a Facebook add that said, in all seriousness, "Occupy your credit card."
posted by willF at 5:39 PM on June 17, 2012


To each according to his credit score.
posted by benito.strauss at 5:41 PM on June 17, 2012


Too bad this is a MasterCard and not Chase Freedom.

Actually, MasterCard works too...
posted by elwoodwiles at 5:42 PM on June 17, 2012


"I am not a MarxCard."
posted by Napoleonic Terrier at 7:42 PM on June 17, 2012


Anyway, at the hotel we were staying at (the Tropicana) there were a few themed clusters of restaurants

"Signature dishes include Siberian Nachos"

Give up Eastern Europe, you don't stand a chance, you can never out-tacky the Eww Ess of Eh!
posted by sammyo at 7:42 PM on June 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


This card doubles as a lockpick. Appropriate the means of production. #marxcard
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 8:24 PM on June 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.

-MarxCard
posted by edgeways at 8:49 PM on June 17, 2012


TrotskyCard has much better terms, but don't try using it in Mexico.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 10:14 PM on June 17, 2012


Or if you do, when you go out drinking stay away from the ice picks.

Also, be careful what you eat: first as tragedy, then as farts.
posted by pracowity at 10:39 PM on June 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


Well, it's a Sparkasse, that is a public savings bank, so I don't think Ol' Charlie would be too outraged. And yes, Chemnitz was once known as Karl-Marx-City, so it isn't altogether surprising.

But I think my bank offers the possibility of personalising your credit and debit cards, and this is giving me...ideas.
posted by Skeptic at 3:05 AM on June 18, 2012


Presumably it will always expire on 18 Brumaire.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 4:54 AM on June 18, 2012


Speaking of coke-addled personalities, I'd like to hear what good ol Zizek has to say about this...
posted by symbioid at 8:30 AM on June 18, 2012


I'd just assume Žižek is all in to some by-invitation-only variety of Bitcoin.
posted by benito.strauss at 2:39 PM on June 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


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