Der Kult des Kapitals. Kapitalismus und Religion bei Walter Benjamin ed. by Mauro Ponzi et al. (review)

It is refreshing to see a collection of essays on Walter Benjamin penned by an unusual group of suspects. Der Kult des Kapitals was inspired by a meeting of the Italian Benjamin Society and while familiar names like Sam Weber and Uwe Steiner do appear, it is encouraging to know that Benjamin's work has found new homes outside of America and Germany. Among those who face the daunting task of writing about Benjamin, it is a common practice to concentrate on a favorite work, but it is less common to see a collection of nearly twenty essays all dedicated to reading the same piece of writing. In this case, that fragment, which belongs to Benjamin's early works, is "Capitalism as Religion." The editors of the collection take the financial crisis of 2008 for inspiration, but the meditation feels coincidentally timelier as an opportunity to commemorate Werner Hamacher, who passed away last year. Hamacher's essay from 2002, "Schuldgeschichte" (translated into English by Kirk Wetters as "Guilt History: Benjamin's Sketch 'Capitalism as Religion'"), was a—perhaps the—ground-breaking reading of the fragment. Though the editors want to make the claim that the fragment has finally reached the Jetztzeit of its legibility because of the political and economic realities staring us in the face today, this collection, as much as any essay on "Capitalism as Religion," owes a great debt to Hamacher's reading.

Hamacher's essay appeared originally in another collection, edited by Dirk Baecker, dedicated to and named after the same fragment by Benjamin. This was also where Uwe Steiner's "Die Grenzen des Kapitalismus. Kapitalismus, Religion und Politik in Benjamins Fragment 'Kapitalismus als Religion'" made its first appearance. Since a reprint of Steiner's essay opens this new collection, it seems a bit rich of the editors to introduce their book with the claim that their publication was necessitated by widespread misunderstandings of Benjamin's fragment. Nevertheless, even if we do date one formative moment of legibility back to Baecker's 2002 collection, Ponzi et al. are clearly hoping that Benjamin's musings on the religious nature of capitalism will finally begin to reach a wider audience in light of the financial meltdown. More than correcting misapprehensions of the text then, the collection seems poised to capitalize on recent interest in the limits of capitalism. But capitalizing on a crisis in order to renew interest in Benjamin is some capitalizing that many of us can probably get behind.

That being said, the editors are betting on much more than a moment of legibility for Benjamin's text: they are hoping that the moment of legibility Benjamin predicted in his fragment is at hand. "Capitalism as Religion" sets itself up as an explicit critique of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. According to Weber, capitalism as we know it would not have been possible without the value system we inherited from Christianity. According to Benjamin, capitalism is not so much a product of Christianity as a religion itself. Indeed, it is unprecedented among religions: the economic theology of capitalism places no value on atonement: its rituals are invested in the accumulation of debt entirely for its own sake (rather than, for instance, in order to lend force to the forgiveness of debts). Debt orders history: as Hamacher puts it, "everything that happens is guilt" (Hamacher 83)¹; everything that happens "is indebted and indebting" (Benjamin 6:92).² Divesting ourselves of guilt is by no means straightforward.

At the outset of the fragment, Benjamin states: "Wir können das Netz in dem wir stehen nicht zuziehn. Später wird dies jedoch überblickt werden" (17). We cannot simply close the net of debt—though frankly, this may prove a blessing. If we were to close it, we would close it on ourselves. If there is any hope for us...