Beyond capitalism as religion: Disenchanting modernization for a radicalized project of modernity

AGAINST THE CLASSICAL LIBERALIST trope of modernity as rational, disenchanted, and enlightened, this article argues to reconstruct it as spell-bound by religion – namely, by capitalism as religion.[2] The argument is drawn from combining a line of thinkers starting with Karl Marx and ranging from Max Weber via Georg Lukács and Walter Benjamin to Lucien Goldmann and Marshall Berman. At the latest since the Marxian twist, any consequent emancipatory critique of religion incorporates a critique of capitalism as well — any project of modernity that is not self-contradictory can no longer be identified with capitalist modernization. More succinctly, the former, conceived of as a political project, must precisely be about overcoming the latter. This is because, if capitalism is to be grasped as a religion, any humanist or enlightened society would have to be postcapitalist. Accordingly, since we are not postcapitalist today, we are not humanist or enlightened either. The article will deliver the foundation of that argument by demonstrating why capitalism must be deciphered as an immanent material cult religion whose worldview is tragic, if not bleakly apocalyptic.