CAPITALISMO COME IDOLATRIA. CAPITALISMO, ETICA E RELIGIONE IN WALTER BENJAMIN TRA MAX WEBER E HERMANN COHEN

In the fragment Kapitalismus als Religion of 1921 Benjamin represents a monadic idea, the idea of capitalism, as Weber tries to do in his Ethik. This is characterized by a mythical dimension dominated by destiny and inclination, unethical, idolatrous, where for the redemption made possible by expiation, purification and penance only a fleeting hope remains. Only through Umkher, the conversion, atonement and purification proper to the possibility of repentance exemplified in the Jewish redemptive possibility of Yom Kippur (the Teshuva, a term translated by Hermann Cohen with the German term Umkher), will it be possible to get out of the cage of capitalism, indebtedness and guilt. In the Benjamin of the '30s the religion of capitalism is represented as an idolatrous cult linked to the fetishism of commodities and the concept of phantasmagoria, typical of advanced capitalism. Only historical criticism, based on remembrance, theory and praxis that derive from the messianic work of the historian allow the exit from the dream of utopia and phantasmagoria, the awakening, and can lead to the redemptive moment that in Benjamin coincides with revolutionary political action: to break the cage that capitalism/Christianity has built around the dreamy humanity of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.