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Capital and Christianity



Some powerful critique here by Walter Benjamin on the emergence of capitalism and protestant religion—seems to be hand in glove with Brad Gregory, Alasdair Macintyre, and Terry Eagleton. If interesting, see Brad Gregory's "Unintended Reformation" on the role of capitalism as political expedient to strife created by reformation politics.


"Christianity in the time of the Reformation did not encourage the emergence of capitalism, but rather changed itself into capitalism."


"Capitalism is a purely cultic religion, without dogma. Capitalism itself developed parasitically on Christianity in the West–not in Calvinism alone, but also, as must be shown, in the remaining orthodox Christian movements - in such a way that, in the end, its history is essentially the history of its parasites, of capitalism. Compare the holy iconography [Heiligenbildern] of various religions on the one hand with the banknotes of various countries on the other: The spirit that speaks from the ornamentation of banknotes."


"Therein lies the historical enormity of capitalism: religion is no longer the reform of being, but rather its obliteration. From this expansion of despair in the religious state of the world, healing is expected. God’s transcendence has fallen, but he is not dead. He is drawn into the fate of man. This passage of “planetary man” [Planeten Mensch] through the house of despair is, in the absolute loneliness of his path, the ethos Nietzsche describes. This man is the Übermensch, the first who knowingly begins to realize the capitalist religion."






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