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Capitalism is presumably the first case of a blaming, rather than a repenting cult. ... An enormous feeling of guilt not itself knowing how to repent, grasps at the cult, not in order to repent for this guilt, but to make it universal, to hammer it into consciousness and finally and above all to include God himself in this guilt.

— Walter Benjamin Capitalism as Religion (1921)

Der Kapitalismus ist vermutlich der erste Fall eines nicht entsühnenden, sondern verschuldenden Kultus. ... Ein ungeheures Schuldbewußtsein das sich nicht zu entsühnen weiß, greift zum Kultus, um in ihm diese Schuld nicht zu sühnen, sondern universal zu machen, dem Bewußtsein sie einzuhämmern und endlich und vor allem den Gott selbst in diese Schuld einzubegreifen.

Original text (German)

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Notes from Wikiquote

Translated by Chad Kautzer in The Frankfurt School on Religion: Key Writings by the Major Thinkers (2005), p. 259

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Walter Benjamin (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.