Due Diligence #3
asks. “Their preservation required Western intervention.”
“My God, you can’t just say that. An extremist group doesn’t constitute the entire Syrian people.”
“The only reason some artifacts persist is because collectors purchased them.”
“Exactly, Western art collectors. ISIS looted those ruins, sold them to the West, fed into the market’s demands. Blood antiquities prove my entire point—it’s the pressures of capitalism that drive this type of cultural exploitation. It splinters people from their history. Capitalism is violence.”
“The world is violence. Doesn’t matter what ideology, what society.”
“Christ. Is it difficult, being so incredibly coldhearted?”
“It’ll get easier for you with age.”
She scowls, ignoring him, examining the temple’s carvings of lotus plants for a moment—the sunk relief of deities, etched
in stone—before glancing back at Aleksandr. He’s watching her.
“Alright, then,” she says. “What about property rights? You must love those.”
“What I work for, I intend to keep as mine, yes.”
“So you agree, then: Property rights are the utmost for you?”
“That’s rather extreme.”
It’s like he’s toying with her—how he leans and alludes and slips away before she can nail down exactly what he believes.
Fine, she’ll just tell him what he thinks, then: push him into boxes until he reveals his hand.
“If you think private property is sacred, how can you justify this? A museum filled with artifacts stolen from other cultures?”
“Do you take me for some sort of libertarian, with this emphasis on property?”
“I don’t know, are you? White man’s anarchy?”
“Technically, it’s a deep faith in laissez-faire politics and economics.”
“And that’s your view, then? The free market will save us all?”
“The free market is us all. It’s the collective agreement of billions of people and their transactions, every day. Central planning, led by one
individual, interferes with the natural state of the market, interferes with liberty, lets societies sleepwalk into dictatorship.”
“Not all concepts of socialism lead to dictatorship, that’s so simplistic! We need some amount of planning, some government
intervention—democratic socialism literally has liberal democracy embedded within it.”
“Any socialist society would forbid capitalist acts between consenting adults.”
“You can’t agree with Nozick.”
“I by no means agree with all of Nozick. I don’t believe anyone would credibly accuse me of being a right-libertarian.”
“Then what would they accuse you of being?”
“A strong neoliberal, I suppose.”
Lili stares at him.
“What?” he asks.
“Where are the exits?”
Aleksandr laughs, walking out of the temple. “You’re the one seeking to challenge the norm; defend your viewpoint. Why should
I become a proponent of—anarcho-Marxism, I think you tried to phrase it the other day? Convince me, Miss Marwan.”
She flushes. “That was a joke.”
He smirks.
She clears her throat and strides out of the temple after him. “I’m not actually a Marxist. Traditional Marxism isn’t really
appropriate for organizing society, but as an analytical structure? It helps make sense of the world, it’s one of the greatest
ideas of the last century. But I believe in liberal democracy, chosen by a nation’s people—so I suppose hard-line Marxists
wouldn’t accept my thoughts on socialism within the construct of states, even if Marx did see democracy as the ultimate goal.”
“Marx didn’t make his commitment to democracy nearly as clear as socialists like to believe. A society without the state?
Global, stateless communism? He got lazy.”
Lili snorts. “Spoken like a true capitalist. Lazy is your insult?”
“You really think the proletariat will seize power and democracy will ensue? He was just waving his hands at that point, running
out of ideas.”
“Well, honestly, I’m not enamored with historical materialism, his stages of history. And I don’t like his views on social
welfare; that it just sways people from the true socialist vision? Welfare—healthcare, housing, systems of support, some measure
of universal basic income—it helps people breathe a bit. Eases some of the terror of failing within capitalism, lets us start
to address real social, environmental, political issues.”
“And governments have such a good record with addressing these issues?”
Lili narrows her eyes. “And the private sector does?”
“State bureaucracies will always tend towards incompetence and inefficiency. Has any government made real progress against
poverty, the climate?”
“What about the bailout? That was literally government intervention you had a hand in.”
He smiles. “Sometimes the economy benefits from a steady hand of guidance.”
Lili folds her arms. “What do you have against the state trying to care for its citizens? Christ, you grew up within socialism.”
“And don’t you think that gives me more experience to speak to the inherent flaws of a planned economy? The free market is
much more capable of self-regulation than a centralized system, much better at encouraging excellence and meeting needs.”
“Or perhaps it just makes you selfish and heartless.”
“When a state reaches into you and your life that much, it’s demanding, not offering.”
Lili frowns. It’s not an unintelligent remark. “You mean rights in exchange for protection. Basically, the social contract.”
“Yes. In socialist societies, you aren’t given the freedom to enter into that contract. You’re forced into it.”
“Okay, no—we’re all born into some preexisting social contract, no matter what country. Nobody chooses to be born into capitalism,
either. No one lives in an actual state of nature.”
“So, what individual freedoms are you willing to sacrifice for state protection?”
She shakes her head. “Sacrifice is such a loaded word, it distorts the entire argument. You need to start from the reverse—what
state protection are we looking for?”
“And?” Aleksandr takes a seat by the reflecting pool, its bench. He looks at her, waiting.
It’s a little disconcerting: someone wanting to hear what she has to say, rather than forcing their own opinions on her.
“Well,” she starts, stepping towards him. She lets the hem of her dress sway a little, as she stands between his legs, not
touching him. When he’s sitting down, he’s almost her height, but instead of leveling their dynamic, it makes her feel more
unsettled. His dark eyes, watching her.
“Ideally,” she says, “a society—its government—provides necessities like education, food, housing. Healthcare, childcare.
If you stumble, there’s support to help you get back on your feet.”
“That level of state apparatus just forcibly protects people from themselves.”
Lili makes an exasperated noise in her throat. “State protection is what we’re discussing.”
His hand comes to rest on the back of her knee, a light touch. The muscles of her thigh jump, but she doesn’t move away. “It
cripples people, societies,” he says. Against her better judgment, her hands settle on his shoulders. “Encourages mediocrity.
If you’ll always be caught by a safety net, what do you have to strive towards?”
“Or maybe it’ll make you feel safe enough to strive, rather than just survive.”
“Consequences are important.” His index finger starts to rub a pattern on the soft skin behind her knee.
“This isn’t about mitigating consequences.”
“No, it’s about insulating people within the gray indifference of bureaucracy, the illusion of protection, so they don’t notice
the theft of their freedom.”
“So, poverty then. Expose people to their consequences—you just mean poverty is the consequence for not being deemed valuable
by the market.”
“You can’t protect people from everything.”
“And people aren’t responsible for every horrible thing that happens in their life.”
He shrugs. “Sink or swim.”
Lili’s hands tighten in the fabric of his suit. “That’s a really fucking nicely sanitized way of saying you’re alright with
people drowning.”
Aleksandr tilts his head. Narrowed gaze, examining her reaction—and she realizes the playfulness, the teasing bite of intellectual
sparring, had drained out of her voice.
Lili steps away from him. She looks at the trees of the park, green beyond the stretch of glass windows.
It doesn’t matter what she thinks, what he thinks. It doesn’t matter if they disagree. That isn’t what this is.
Aleksandr stands. “Enough about politics,” he says. “I brought you here for art.”
Not an apology, not a concession—she’s not sure she wants either.
It’s not her problem. He’s not her problem.
“Come on,” she orders. “If we have to be here, I want to get upstairs.”
She counts their footsteps, back through the galleries, the Great Hall. “What’s your favorite piece here?” he asks, as they
climb the grand staircase.
“What do you think is my favorite piece?” she counters.
Aleksandr smiles, not rising to the bait. “I wouldn’t presume to know.”
Lili thinks about veering off to contemporary art, finding a Duchamp to scandalize him. Instead, she takes a familiar path
to later European painting. She winds through Rodin’s bronze sculptures, set against the moody Hague blue of the gallery walls.
“Here,” she says, stopping at the end of the long room. “This one.”
Aleksandr leans in to read the curator note on the wall. Suddenly, Lili’s seized by the sense of no—she wants him to hear about it from her. She grasps his hand, pulling him back with her until they’re several feet away from
the painting, and can really see it at a full distance.
“It’s called Island of the Dead,” she says. “1880, Bocklin. He doesn’t fill it with imaginings, doesn’t try to illustrate death, or show what’s waiting.
The center of it is just—darkness. But it feels full. No idea what’s awaiting the figure in the boat once they reach the island.”
She lets her gaze relax on the piece, as she has many times before. Beats pass, and her stare softens deeper into the blacks,
the shades of darkness melting into green, the spare moments of white.
“What do you like about it?”
Aleksandr’s voice slips into her calm. Lili glances at him. He’s considering the painting. With focus and attention, he’s
watching it, not just looking at it.