The Genealogy of Feeling

The capital is a religion

1 min read

Tags: neoliberalism - religion - capitalism

Could it be that Capital is a new God, making us guilty and debt-ridden again? Walter Benjamin held that capitalism is a religion. As he put it, capitalism represents the ‘first case of a cult that creates guilt, not atonement’ (der erste Fall eines nicht entsühnenden, sondern verschuldenden Kultus). Since there is no possibility of relieving debt and guilt, the state of unfreedom perpetuates itself: ‘A vast sense of guilt that is unable to find relief seizes on the cult, not to atone for this guilt but to make it universal. 1

Changelog

  • Updated in June 2026

Footnotes

  1. Byung Chul Han: Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism And New Technologies Of Power ↩

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