Rome's destitution breeds the most absurd and saddening innovations. On friday evening as reached the ancient walls that mark the junction of Via Marsala and Via Castro Pretorio, women and men waited for the cars to stop at the lights. They then leaped out and began polishing the windows, but it was raining and the had no soap, so effectively they were just drying the car windows, as the drops fell reversing their efforts. Occasionally a guilt-ridden driver wound down the window to deposit some coins in their hands - this is the mortal economy in a naked and brutal form, and serves as reminder not to romanticize previous epochs based upon forms of value and exchange preceding the commodity.

The same thought occurs to me now reading the gift exchange literature; the net has been celebrated as an instance of a potlatch economy by gushing anthropolgists, but the conveying of a gift left the recipient in hoc, in debt, under obligation, confirmed once again in her place in the social pecking order, which is an ironic use of the word her as women formed part of the goods that were in fact exchanged. Freedom has many facets, and one of them is precisely being able to walk into a shop and get what you need without having to justify who you are and what you do,