Capitalism - the Ultimate Religion

[Existentialist]

Does the fact that some Christians believe the Earth is 6,000 years old mean that Christianity involves that belief? No. Likewise, just because some capitalists may believe in capital as a God (although you've yet to cite any sources for that), doesn't mean that capitalism involves the elevation of capital to god-like status.

Thanks Adrian. I may have not made it clear enough so far, but my hypothesis - that capitalism is a religion - contains within it the idea that it is a behaviour of capitalists to deny that capitalism is a religion and to deny that it behaves like a religion, even to themselves. The thread I started was therefore intended to see if it is possible shine some light on something that has previously been in darkness. If I have left that idea out, then I am grateful for the opportunity to include it now.

I started to allude to it in my post #75 when I made reference to "the survival of capitalism, particularly its need to hide from full view its structure and its authoritarian mechanisms. I'll elaborate in more detail later on." Unfortunately I haven't had a chance yet to elaborate, but I don't think any religion, whether it be catholicism or capitalism, has at its helm a group of knowing directors who are constantly planning the religion's next move. Decision-making is largely reactive, and religions acquire structures and policies which happen to benefit their survival.

I do not think that there is any significant group of capitalists, nor even some capitalists, who "believe in capital as a God" i.e. they don't sit down praying to capital or otherwise indulging themselves in ritual worship of capital, and then go out implementing what they've been praying about. If they literally believed in capital as a God then I'd have thought it would all be out in the open, and this debate would be unnecessary. But belief in a deity is not a necessary part of most definitions of religion, hence Buddhism is still a religion, as (in my argument) is capitalism. It is behaviours other than literal worship and literal belief in a deity that categorise capitalism as a religion.

Therefore, it is on the basis of the behaviour of capitalist interests that I say it is a religion, not their expressed beliefs, or even secret beliefs, in any supposed deity. The behaviour of capitalism as a whole system, how it acts on the world, betrays it as a religion, not what its leading lights say or believe.

Your argument is flawed from the start because at no point in the definition (oh noes! not those!) of capitalism does it ever suggest anything even remotely religious.

A lot of people think that capitalism is an oppressor, but at no point the definition does it suggest anything even remotely oppressive. Does this fact mean that any argument that capitalism is an oppressor is flawed?