Il banchiere anarchico

Fernando Pessoa's paradoxical 1922 short story is styled as a Platonic dialogue between a wealthy banker and his colleague, in which the banker explains the strictly logical path that led him step-by-step from an anarchist youth to being the only true and consistent anarchist. The tale playfully undermines many of the founding texts of political 'enlightenment' (Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Malthus, Rousseau, Smith, Spinoza), as well as making a devastating critique of revolutionary psychology and of 1917 Bolshevism. Like magic, the sleight of hand is transparent, apparently convincing us of the banker's inexorable logic, while the plot challenges us to discover the flaw in the shocking twist of the wealthy banker's logic.