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January 7, 2011
In Capitalism as Religion: Walter Benjamin and Max Weber in Historical Materialism 17(2009) Michael Lowy analyzes Walter Benjamin's response Max Weber’s famous treatment of Protestantism and capitalism. Benjamin’s fragment sought to demonstrate that capitalism was strengthened by religious culture at key points in its development, and that it was itself a religious phenomenon.
The first is that capitalism is a peculiarly cultic phenomenon, one in which ‘nothing has meaning that is not immediately related to the cult’. The cultic activities – ‘capital investment, speculation, financial operations, stock-exchange manipulations, the selling and buying of commodities’ – are the only ones invested with meaning, as all else is rendered valueless.
The second religious aspect of capitalism is its conception of time. Capital’s time is homogenous, rationalized. It marches steadily forward without interruption, without pause.
The final religious aspect of capitalism is its production of despair. Capital recognizes nothing beyond itself. It forecloses on all futures except its own. This destruction of futurity can be seen as the essence of despair, since any hope is contingent upon the possibility of a future.
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Gary, Henry Giroux published an interesting essay on this theme.
It is titled The Twilight of the Social State: Walter Benjamin and the Angel of History.