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"Capitalism as Religion" (German: Kapitalismus als Religion) is Walter Benjamin's (1892—1940) unfinished work, written in 1921. It was published in 1985 and forms part of Benjamin's early sketches on social and political theory, religion, and the theory of history.
“Ben Friedman’s Religion and the Rise of Capitalism is an expansive and intricate tapestry depicting the progression and interaction of ideas and events in economics and (mainly Protestant) religion across four centuries.
Contrary to the conventional historical view of economics as an entirely secular product of the Enlightenment, Benjamin M. Friedman demonstrates that religion exerted a powerful influence from the outset.
Indeed, as the purest form of credit is money, capitalism is a religion in which money is the God, and banks, through their ability to produce and govern credit, have replaced churches and are now the managers of faith.
Nov 24, 2016 · Benjamin defines capitalism as “cultic religion”, pinpointing the equivalence between moral guilt and economic debt. This meaning derives from a reading of Nietzsche who dedicates an section of Genealogy of Morality to this subject, claiming that guilt/debt can never be extinguished.
- Mauro Ponzi
- 2017
According to Benjamin, capitalism represents not only a secularisation of the Protestant faith (as it does in Weber), but is itself an essentially religious phenomenon, which develops parasitically off Christianity. As such, as the religion of modernity, it is defined by three characteristics:
Apr 20, 2021 · This book is organized around a central question, where do our ideas about how the economy works and our views on economic policy come from? Professor Friedman's answer in a nutshell is that the rise of capitalism was deeply influenced by religious thought, particularly Protestant thought.
