Secularism as a Shadow of Capital: A Historical Materialist View

Abstract

The lesson of historical materialism is that, to meet changing human needs, there must be a social provisioning process. “Secular society” does not describe a provisioning process. “Capitalist society” names a coherent, self-maintaining and self-reproducing provisioning process. Secular society is dependent upon a set of social principles and purposes that can organize a self-sustaining society; it is a shadow of capital. Secularism traces certain features of a capitalist society even if it leaves others in the dark, so there is reason to call a capitalist society a secular society. Historical materialism widens Charles Taylor’s focus in A Secular Age on “the conditions of belief” to the social form and purpose of the material conditions of belief and unbelief.|Keywords: secularism, capitalism, historical materialism, instrumental reason and action, Karl Marx, Max Weber