Tracking Manifestations of Parasitic Deified-Capital in Work And Wellness
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Romans 21-25
Walter Benjamin wrote in 1921: “capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed.” Over a hundred years later, his words ring as true as ever. He added: “capitalism has developed as a parasite of Christianity” (Benjamin, 2004). As Giorgio Agamben revisited Benjamin’s essay, he stated: “capitalism is (...) a religion in which faith – credit – is substituted for God. In other words, since the pure form of credit is money, it is a religion in which God is money”(McLoughlin, 2016). Does this mean that the unsatiated parasite of capitalism, after decades of fattening on sacred flesh, has now managed to fully consume God and take their place? In an interview, Agamben clarifies:
“God did not die; he was transformed into money. The Bank—with its faceless drones and its experts—has taken the place of the church with its priests, and by its command over credit (...), manipulates and manages the faith” (Sava, n.d.)
What is the nature of this “transformation” that Agamben is describing? Strikingly, this process closely resembles what Apostle Paul described in the Epistle to the Romans as follows: “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Bible Socie International, and International Bible Society, 2001). While Agamben says that the bank has taken the place of the church, my aim is to show how this transformation has much wider dispersed consequences, resulting in other spaces, such as work and wellness spaces, acquiring cultic characteristics.
Gordon and Swathson (2014) observe that “young adults of the current generation (...) shown a marked tendency toward a preference for describing themselves as spiritual as contrasted to religious”. This phenomenon of the rise of spirituality serves a host for deified-capital, providing a space for commodified “pure cult” practices, infiltrating numerous areas of everyday, seemingly secular life. Anecdotally, when attending a Sunday indoor cycling class with a group of friends, we jokingly began referring to them as “Sunday church”. A popular United States based indoor cycling chain encourages this sentiment with a brand name “Soulcycle”. This aptly exemplifies how secular, profit-oriented establishments may on cultic characteristics. Yoga and fitness studios in the West resemble holy sites. There is a set of codified behaviors similar to entering a site of worship: taking off your shoes, particular clothing dictated more by the aesthetics than practical purpose, keeping the voice down, and movements soft. “Namaste”, the favoured greeting of Western yoga practitioners, translates as “divine in you greets the divine in me”. But when referring to God or divine, many yoga instructors will rush to clarify that by God, they don’t mean a particular entity or belief: “it can be whatever you want, the Universe, higher power, or even yourself”. This again echoes Benjamin’s description of capitalism “as religion of pure cult, without dogma” (Benjamin, 2004). While a yoga instructor calls upon the divine, its role is to serve as a prop to increasing the value of a commodity, without a reference to any specific dogma - a form without content. Interestingly, the appropriated Eastern religions referenced in the commodified practices of yoga and meditation favor the concept of reincarnation rather than redemption in the afterlife. To recall Agamben’s (McLoughlin, 2016) theorizing of credit as an act of faith “businesses must basically mortgage in advance increasing quantities of future labour and production”. Perhaps reincarnation is a convenient concept for capital, keeping the subject endlessly involved in increasing production and accumulation, even across many lives - “sans reve et sans merci [without dream or mercy]” (Benjamin, 2004). As a parasite of Christianity, capital deprives humanity of the death of God, which means depriving us of hope for redemption.
Unsurprisingly, one important space that has turned into a site of worship of capital-God is the workplace. The recent workplace phenomena called “quiet quitting” unmasks how parasitic capital’s involvement in one’s working life has become. “Quiet quitting” is defined by reducing one’s activities at work to entail only what’s specified in the job description, and only during the contracted, paid working hours. What emerges from this concept, is that nowadays, daring to reduce work to just the dimension of “labor” is a radical act, comparable to abandoning the position altogether. So what is it, besides labor, that found its feeding ground under a broad umbrella of work life?
Meta’s (formerly Facebook) Code of Conduct for employees outlines their ambition to provide workers with a “feeling of belonging”, so that they are “empowered to bring their authentic self to work”. However, I dare to suggest that a subject approaching this invite literally could see his tenure at such a workplace cut short. This “authentic self” will soon face limitations imposed by a specific belief system, dictated by capital, equivalent to The 10 Commandments, in the form of documents such as “Company Core Values”, “Mission Statement”, and others. Although many companies meticulously avoid discrimination (as failure to do so could imply criminal consequences), a concept of “culture fit” is widely acknowledged as helpful in HR practices. Culture fit refers to having employees “whose beliefs, values, and behaviors are in alignment with those of the employer” (Lee, 2019). Authenticity and diversity are encouraged, as long as the employee conforms. Preferably, not merely by an implicit acceptance of the commandments, but by proactive evangelizing and explicit expression of faith, manifesting as “going above and beyond” through overworking, attending social gatherings with coworkers outside work, overachieving beyond set goals etc. It is no longer enough to purchase a worker’s labor - the capital demands to inhabit their beliefs, a space previously held by religion, and encourage the worker to derive a sense of belonging and meaning from their work.
This calls to explore another aspects of work life, known as “corporate wellness” that brings to mind Benjamin’s (2004) claim that “there are no weekdays”, as further explained by Agamben (2007): “there is a single, uninterrupted holiday, in which work coincides with the celebration of the cult”. The concept of corporate wellness refers to various activities organized by the employer, “targeting the improvement of ‘wellness’ of employees” (Till, 2019). Significantly, these corporate wellness practices (in the West) keenly reach for aforementioned commodified Eastern practices such as yoga and meditation. The place of work is no longer a place just for work - but also “meet the divine (in the other)”. Employers may insist their motives revolve around employee wellbeing and happiness, and act out concern. However, a key way to evaluate these programs is in fact the company’s return of investment, manifested in reducing employee absenteeism, job satisfaction – which improves retention and reduces recruitment costs – and overall worker productivity. At the end of the road, there is no redemption - there’s only capital.
But this blurring of boundaries has a cost, or one could say: it’s on credit. The deified-capital requires not only a sacrifice of labour, but also of beliefs – “cultural fit”, making a parasitic advance of one’s identity through “pure form” – pure cult – empty, adogmatic spirituality. Once work takes on cultic properties, it becomes difficult to leave it behind outside the designated, and paid labour hours. “There are no weekdays”, which means there are no holidays either. For instance, McDonald's employees receive a discount card allowing them to purchase company’s products at a lower price. While they are already receiving a free meal during every shift, puzzlingly, many employees find themselves returning to restaurant’s branches to dine on days when they are not working.
To conclude, the presence of “capitalism is a purely cultic religion” can be observed across many areas of life of a subject, with the persistent advance of deified-capital manifesting in contemporary workplace and wellness spaces. Adogmatic, commodified spirituality becomes a welcomed alternative to Christianity, being additionally co-opted by the workplace under the guise of corporate wellness. While workplaces claim they support authenticity, they develop their own commandments that workers are encouraged to worship to conform to a “company’s culture”. While a company could not possibly impose a religion on a worker, it may freely encourage participation in “pure cult” spirituality that’s free to interpretation, which at the same time makes it lacking in content. Ultimately, the underlying objective of all the examined practices is the worship (sustaining and the multiplication) of capital. Since God did not die, but was transformed into money, the subject, deprived of a path to redemption, continues reincarnating with faith (credit) in future accumulation.
References
Agamben, Giorgio. 2020. Profanations. Translated by Jeff Fort. Zone Books. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv16t6n36.
Benjamin, Walter. 2004. Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, 1: 1913-1926 Edited by Marcus Paul Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. London, England: Belknap Press.
Bible Socie International, and International Bible Society. 2001. Bible: New International Version. London, England: Hodder & Stoughton Religious.
Giordan, Giuseppe, and William H. Swatos, eds. 2014. Religion, Spirituality and Everyday Practice. 2012th ed. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
Lee, Sophia. 2019. “Culture Fit: What You Need to Know.” Culture Amp. July 1, 2019. https://www.cultureamp.com/blog/culture-fit.
“Meta - Code of Conduct.” n.d. Meta.com. Accessed October 5, 2022.
https://about.meta.com/en/code-of-conduct/.
Savà. Peppe. n.d. “God Didn’t Die, He Was Transformed into Money” - An Interview with Giorgio Agamben. Libcom.org. Accessed October 4, 2022.
https://libcom.org/article/god-didnt-die-he-was-transformed-money-interview-giorgio-ag amben-peppe-sava.
McLoughlin, Daniel. 2016. Agamben and Radical Politics. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press.
Till, Christopher. 2019. Creating “automatic subjects”: corporate wellness and self-tracking. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, 23 (4). pp. 418-435. ISSN 1363-4593 DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1177/1363459319829957
