Written by Kevin Healey, Institute of Communications Research
“Political democracy is Christian in the sense that man, not merely one man but every man, is there considered a sovereign being, a supreme being.” - Marx, “On the Jewish Question”
For her SCT lecture, Wendy Brown aimed to address the apparent resurgence of religion today, especially as it occurs against the backdrop of neoliberal capitalism. As she pointed out in her subsequent mini-seminar, other authors such as Saba Mahmood and William Connelly have addressed the contemporary interplay between religion and capitalism from distinct perspectives (Mahmood with a concern for Western imperialism against Islamic cultures, and Connelly through a more abstract Deleuzian lens). For her part, Brown sought to defend a unique reading of Marx that could shed light on current events.
Brown insists that Marx understood capitalism to “require and entail” its own religious ethos. For Marx, Brown argues, the collapse of the sacred/profane distinction does not “overcome” but rather “rearranges” the religious. Secularism is therefore a kind of rearranged form of the religious. The more common reading of Marx is that capitalism strips away the religious, revealing an underlying reality where political economy is the ultimate determining factor. But Brown claims that there is a “second Marx” waiting to be read, in his more noted works like the Manifesto and Capital but perhaps more clearly in less-known work like “On the Jewish Question.” Brown’s Marx claims that what capitalism reveals is its own violence toward mankind and the sacred. Capitalism does not reveal humanity; rather, it reveals its own inhumanity. Rather than overcoming religion, capitalism depends on religion for its proper functioning; and at the same time, it comes to operate as religion. In this sense, Brown argues, Marx offers a political theology of the capitalist state.
Brown’s reading of Marx is certainly helpful in understanding the collusion between religion (specifically, Christianity) and capitalism from a critical perspective. What I find interesting is that these types of discussion seem to presuppose a widespread surprise that such collusion would exist in the first place. Adam Smith himself was very clear that free market principles applied equally to both economic and religious spheres. Smith devoted substantial portions of The Wealth of Nations to a defense of religious disestablishment, arguing (against Hume, specifically) that competition between religious sects would lead not to increased strife but to moderation. In this light, historians like Frank Lambert are not at all guilty of anachronism in talking about the pre- and post-Revolutionary periods in terms of “religious regulation” and “religious deregulation.” Lambert notes that the highly popular preacher George Whitefield (an itinerant evangelical in the 1740s) spoke of his own evangelism in terms that borrowed self-consciously from the discourse of free market economics.
The symbiosis between religion and free market capitalism, therefore, is nothing new: in fact it was arguably part of the logic that informed the First Amendment. (There is certainly a resonance between Smith’s discussions of religion and Madison’s arguments in the Federalist Papers, although I do not know whether Madison read Smith.) What might be new, though, are the particular brands of contemporary evangelicalism that “resonate” with neoliberal capitalism. But these new strains can only be understood properly when placed in historical perspective. This is what I found lacking from Brown’s lecture and her follow-up seminar.
Brown’s discussion raised a number of good questions, but my main concern is this: How can we address questions of religion and economics in a way that doesn’t reduce Christianity to contemporary American evangelicalism, or reduce evangelicals to a monolithic group?
“Political democracy is Christian in the sense that man, not merely one man but every man, is there considered a sovereign being, a supreme being.” - Marx, “On the Jewish Question”
For her SCT lecture, Wendy Brown aimed to address the apparent resurgence of religion today, especially as it occurs against the backdrop of neoliberal capitalism. As she pointed out in her subsequent mini-seminar, other authors such as Saba Mahmood and William Connelly have addressed the contemporary interplay between religion and capitalism from distinct perspectives (Mahmood with a concern for Western imperialism against Islamic cultures, and Connelly through a more abstract Deleuzian lens). For her part, Brown sought to defend a unique reading of Marx that could shed light on current events.
Brown insists that Marx understood capitalism to “require and entail” its own religious ethos. For Marx, Brown argues, the collapse of the sacred/profane distinction does not “overcome” but rather “rearranges” the religious. Secularism is therefore a kind of rearranged form of the religious. The more common reading of Marx is that capitalism strips away the religious, revealing an underlying reality where political economy is the ultimate determining factor. But Brown claims that there is a “second Marx” waiting to be read, in his more noted works like the Manifesto and Capital but perhaps more clearly in less-known work like “On the Jewish Question.” Brown’s Marx claims that what capitalism reveals is its own violence toward mankind and the sacred. Capitalism does not reveal humanity; rather, it reveals its own inhumanity. Rather than overcoming religion, capitalism depends on religion for its proper functioning; and at the same time, it comes to operate as religion. In this sense, Brown argues, Marx offers a political theology of the capitalist state.
Brown’s reading of Marx is certainly helpful in understanding the collusion between religion (specifically, Christianity) and capitalism from a critical perspective. What I find interesting is that these types of discussion seem to presuppose a widespread surprise that such collusion would exist in the first place. Adam Smith himself was very clear that free market principles applied equally to both economic and religious spheres. Smith devoted substantial portions of The Wealth of Nations to a defense of religious disestablishment, arguing (against Hume, specifically) that competition between religious sects would lead not to increased strife but to moderation. In this light, historians like Frank Lambert are not at all guilty of anachronism in talking about the pre- and post-Revolutionary periods in terms of “religious regulation” and “religious deregulation.” Lambert notes that the highly popular preacher George Whitefield (an itinerant evangelical in the 1740s) spoke of his own evangelism in terms that borrowed self-consciously from the discourse of free market economics.
The symbiosis between religion and free market capitalism, therefore, is nothing new: in fact it was arguably part of the logic that informed the First Amendment. (There is certainly a resonance between Smith’s discussions of religion and Madison’s arguments in the Federalist Papers, although I do not know whether Madison read Smith.) What might be new, though, are the particular brands of contemporary evangelicalism that “resonate” with neoliberal capitalism. But these new strains can only be understood properly when placed in historical perspective. This is what I found lacking from Brown’s lecture and her follow-up seminar.
Brown’s discussion raised a number of good questions, but my main concern is this: How can we address questions of religion and economics in a way that doesn’t reduce Christianity to contemporary American evangelicalism, or reduce evangelicals to a monolithic group?