0547 I now move to Lecture 2.10.

In the preceding section, Santner dwells on the word “doxologies”.

0548 There are two doxologies flowing upwards in the following figure.

This pair of doxologies is glory and money.

One is societal.  The other is organizational.

0548 Santner coins the word, paradoxology, for exploring this double flow.

The subject matter of the political economy is a paradoxology.

0549 There are two movements flowing downwards in the preceding figure.

The pair of condensates are busy-ness and identity / purpose.

One is societal.  The other is organizational.

One is enforced through sovereign laws and decrees.  The other is inculcated through broadcast advertising.

0550 Santner recounts a debate about how to interpret Kafka’s writings.

Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem expressed different views of the theological tracks of Kafka’s stories.

0551 Scholem argued that Kafka’s work shines like a revelation.  But, it’s a tricky revealing.  It does not lead the reader to God, but to some originating nothingness.

0552 Benjamin countered that Kafka’s work has a message: The gate to justice is study.  But the question is: What to study?  The Torah has been brushed over by modern inquiry.  Students have lost the Holy Writ.

0553 Scholem replied: No, those who study have not lost the Scriptures.  They have lost the ability to decipher them.

0554 Does this conversation fit into the previous figure?

A suprasovereign religion was brushed over by the time that Marx projected the transcendent (a political theology) onto the immanent (the machinations of the organization tier).

0555 Santner concludes with Walter Benjamin’s tripartite image of capitalism.

In one panel, capitalism is a purely cultic religion.  It has no doctrine.  It has no dogma.  Adam Smith’s theories of the self-regulation of markets are exemplar.  What is the invisible hand?  It is dogma?  Or is a way to describe events that cannot be reduced to cause and effect?

In the next panel, capitalism is always “on”.  It never takes a holiday.  Santner associates this to the doxologies of everyday life.  Work is always waiting.  Duties are never completed.

In the final panel, capitalism creates guilt, not atonement.  In other words, it creates more debt, more burdens and more work.

Does the sovereignty of debt become sovereign debt?

Not necessarily, but it happens often enough.  After all, who pays for the political entrepreneurs?  Who pays for the busy-ness of citizens^Marat?

0556 Does each of Benjamin’s panels describe a level of the organization tier as understood from the communist perspective?

How curious.

0557 Certainly, capitalism is a religion worthy of contempt.

Too bad it is a projection of Marxist ideology.

Walter Benjamin’s career as literary critic expanded the cognitive space opened by the Marxist religion. 

This is the nature of religions.

0558 Marxist ideology projects a plausible theology onto something in the organization tier that everyone encounters.

0559 Marx selected one of the best encounters.

In every purchase, I, the buyer, encounter a corporation that I do not belong to.

Is this alienating, or what?

0560 My money goes up from the product (content) through the price (situation) and becomes surplus value(perspective).

A quality of the product comes down, from the brand name (perspective) through the abstract material guaranteed by the brand name (situation) to the aspects of my identity congruent with this abstract material (content).

0561 Following this pattern, I only purchase bread from The Staff of Life Bakery.

It is my paradoxology.

My devotion increases the glory of the bakery.  The bakery provides me with a mission, “Eat the bread of life.”

My money keeps the bakery in business.  The brand name makes my mouth water.

0562 When Adam Smith attempted to describe this process, he saw an invisible hand, guaranteeing high quality products for low price.  There was no dogma.  There were no doctrines.  There was only rational self-interest.

0563 When Karl Marx passed judgment on this process, he reified the theological dogmas of mercantilism.  Everywhere that Marx looked in the organization tier, he found religious expression.

If he were to start his own religion, then what better way than to project the theology of mercantilism onto the operations of the organization tier and then declare it evil?

Indeed, the organization tier becomes evil when viewed as an unholy ascent of money and a devilish descent of brand names.

0564 Thus, the paradoxology of Marxism becomes clear.

A doxology of communist power rises through the society tier in response to a projected evil doxology, called “capitalism”, arising in the organization tier.

0565 The organizational objectives of Marxism become inevitable once its projections are assumed and never questioned.

0566 To me, this conclusion makes the works of Eric Santner and Giorgio Agamben fascinating to behold.  Here is the subject matter of political economy.