ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that something more than mere proximity connects London's current cultural role with its contemporary financial function. London's twin towers finance and culture exist not only alongside each other: the one is already inside the other; inherent in what is also its opposite. There is a correspondence between the duality of London's cultural dimension, and the ambiguous character of the financial services which the city also provides. In London's current culture, the steps between abstraction and formulation are halting and difficult. Similarly, in the city's economic activity there is less of a dance between finance and production; more of a stand-off between them. As a force for generalisation and socialisation, capitalist production has never ranged so widely, even if it is also acquisitive, domineering and partly alienating; hence the worldwide attraction of London, past and present, as a monument to socialisation as well as atomisation.
