The dogmas of contemporary capitalism in Elettra Stimilli social theory.
In this essay I will try to explain a perspective that for many reasons is predetermined by the
influence of the intellectual context in which it is formulated, namely the Italian one. The first
implication, which it will be unnecessary to linger on, is the relevance in Stimilli’s thought of
Continental thinkers such as Hegel, Heidegger, Foucault, Freud, Weber, Löwith. Another
implication, which requires a few more considerations instead, is that even just the
translation of certain words into English can create misunderstandings, which need to be
clarified. A concept such as “Judaic-Christian religious tradition” here will be referred to as a
wide expression satisfying the following historical and theoretical criteria: (1) it comprehends
Judaism, Christianity, and to some extent also Islam, and (2) it covers a variety of
monotheistic religious beliefs according to which the ultimate truth, i.e. god, occupies a
transcendent position in relation to the world (a position of separation). Religions that are
connected with such a tradition (in spite of its high degree of fragmentation and inner
disunity) share some fundamental texts, similar and sometimes coincident stories, people,
relevant prophets; they also share a wide set of precepts, moral standards, and conclusions
about life and human nature. Amongst these, the most relevant one for the present essay is
the idea according to which the human condition is a sinful one, namely a condition of
incompleteness, imperfection, and fault. It is on the ground of this specific content’s
repercussions on the economic level that Elettra Stimilli mounts a critique of capitalism; she
does so along the lines of Max Weber’s famous claims on the relation between Calvinism and
capitalism. Her theory is mainly focused on Christianity. However, since the theology of
Christianity (more than that of Judaism or Islam) has been shaped also by the influence of
philosophers from the ancient Greek pagan context, and particularly by Plato and Aristotle,
there will be many aspects of these philosophers’ thoughts that are relevant to the present
analyses.
The first part of this essay will consider how, in Stimilli’s view, the aforementioned religious
content, the one highlighting the imperfections of human nature, would play a major role on
the economic level; her efforts are not only directed to individualise a connection between the
radical religiosity of the early Christian communities and what can be seen as today’s
totalising position of economics in everyone’s life; she also claims that contemporary
capitalism relies on a subtle understanding of the human condition and religiousness;
according to this position, in developed and receding economies the capital has managed to
transform human intellectual and religious energy into an instrument to multiply profits.
The second part will explore macroscopic applications of this perspective, relying on
examples from the current global socio-economic scenario. The role of what are called here
“dogmas of contemporary capitalism” (and specifically the imperatives of debt, growth, and
consumption) as well as the economic, cultural, emotional costs on everyone’s life deriving
from them will be analysed and discussed. In the conclusion, the political relevance of
Stimilli’s alternative proposals will be considered with particular regard to the ideas of
freedom and democracy. About this, the present essay will not be primarily concerned with
her negative interpretation of the role of the Judaic-Christian religious tradition in history: the
question on whether such a radical view should be accepted or not would require separate
extensive analyses. What is important here is just the fact that Stimilli seems to individualise
fundamental dynamics concerning the way capitalism transforms the human needs of a
meaning and religiosity into a powerful instrument to multiply revenues. According to her,
understanding such forces at work is itself a crucial step towards the liberation of human
intellectual and spiritual resources1.
Philosophical practice and religious practice
One of the most distinctive features of humanity, differentiating it from animals, and
characterising in decisive ways both the moral domain and the political one, consists in the
human need to go beyond purely biological ends for actions. Notwithstanding many
theoretical attempts to reduce human life to primary needs, and in spite of the evident
importance of such basic requirements in almost every sphere of life, humans do not act with
an eye only on primary desires. Every human agent, no matter his or her social position, while
taking any sorts of actions guided by ends, adheres to standards of moral, religious, aesthetic,
and cultural kind; s/he rejects other ones, and s/he mediate amongst these through
sophisticated abstractions. These elements occupy such a crucial position on the level of
practical reason that they can be regarded themselves in the guise of purposes of actions:
without these, actions, no matter how effective they are in terms of accomplishment of tasks,
would not make sense. It is hence possible to state that humans act with a high degree of
independence from primary needs, deriving from mere biological automatisms, and that the
ends of human actions are the result of a complex and autonomous ethical, aesthetical, and
existential process of definition2. Moreover, the achievement of happiness in life does not
depend simply on the correct accomplishment of measures aiming towards the fulfilment of
primary needs, but on the correct elaboration of meaningful ends and means making sense of
life.
This vision of the practical reason occupies a prominent position within a tradition of moral
philosophy, including authors such as Aristotle, and Kant3. However, its effects are well
observable in the daily and continuous efforts that every individual person has to make both
privately and publicly in order to refine his or her personality through and according to
relevant moral standards, which s/he choses. On this level, choices are not devoid of
important repercussions on the lives of the agents: there can be better or worse choices but
hardly un-costly ones. This daily work of definition and refinement of the self is called here a
“philosophical practice”.
A similar and more radical version of this attitude towards the self can be found in religious
thought, defining a very distinctive element of a wide range of experiences of religiosity. Here,
the unavoidable necessity that no-one seems to be able to escape, to constantly refine his or
her own moral statute, evidently reveals the imperfection or even the wickedness of human
nature4. Individual believers are called to undertake hard moral and spiritual efforts, in order
to approximate to a kind of perfect life, which ultimately no-one can reach. Such view can be
found also in Plato: according to his anthropology the body and the irrational part of the mind
are seen as burdens preventing humans to achieve perfection in life5.
In the Judaic-Christian religious tradition, God provides humans with a few remedies to the
natural sinful condition in which they were born: baptism, pardon for sins, donation of states
of grace, and, eventually, salvation after death. With regard to this, theorists and experts of
religions from the Italian context use the following expression to identify the central idea of
With regard to the use of expressions such as “human resources”, “human capital”, see
Stimilli’s critique of Gary Becker’s idea of “human capital”, in Stimilli 2011: 18, 72-77, 267276.
2 Stimilli 2011, 10-11, 111-118, 199.
3 Stimilli 2011, 10-12.
4 Stimilli 2011, 160-162; 176-199.
5 Plato, Phaedrus, 246a-254e.
1
the, so-called, salvific religions: the “economics of salvation” 6 . The use of the word
“economics” here is justified by the fact that individuals accept to accomplish ethical and
spiritual hard tasks because they hope to gain salvation in life hereafter. According to
Stimilli’s radically critical view of religions, this attitude shows itself as a typical tendency in
religion where life as a whole becomes a sort of investment: the perspective of some benefit
after death, makes individuals accept a life of pain, voluntary deprivation, and sometimes
even self inflicted sufferings7.
In Elettra Stimilli’s texts, both the latest dynamic underlying the religious practice, and its
milder version underlying the philosophical practice, fall under the domain of asceticism. It
has to be said that her adoption of the word “ascetic” is to be intended here in its purest
classical meaning, corresponding to the ancient Greek word “áskesis”, namely exercise or
practice aiming for perfecting the self8. While engaging in such an ascetic practice, individuals
are kept in a struggle, rejecting one or more parts of themselves, fighting against such parts,
finally employing both intellectual and spiritual energy for the achievement of better (and
closer to perfection) definitions of themselves. According to Stimilli, this ascetic attitude,
whose milder philosophical and more radical religious interpretations have been discussed,
has significant implications on the level of economics. While arguing so, she goes beyond both
Max Weber’s famous thesis on the existence of a connection between Calvinist ethics and
capitalism, and Karl Löwith’s thesis on the derivativeness of the modern philosophy of history
from the Bible’s theology of history9. Indeed both Weber and Löwith seem to argue that
throughout the history of Western civilisation, messianic expectations (Löwith) and hope of
salvation (Weber) have been transferred from the transcendent level to the immanent and
secular one; according to Löwith this occurred through the historical impact of doctrines such
as utopianism of the Renaissance, German idealism, and finally Marxism and positivism10.
Within the lines of Stimilli’s theory, some premises of the totalising economic form of social
life underlying contemporary capitalism can be detected in and recovered from the JudaicChristian religious tradition since its very origins. This is a strong claim, which deserves at
least some brief scrutiny.
As it was mentioned above, Christianity interprets life as a sort of investment where salvation
depends on the correct actualisation of relevant moral deeds, which need to be adherent to
specific rules and ethical standards. Life is seen as a constant strain guided by and aiming for
the perfection of the self; such strain can be experienced either as an easy task by some or as a
dramatically harder one by others. Stimilli argues that in radical religious forms of life, the
perception of the imperfection of life can be such an evident and totalising assumption that
life itself would be conceived as completely devoid of meaning. Under such extreme
circumstances, even the connection between good actions and salvation in life hereafter
becomes quite an ephemeral and weak consolation, almost a chimera. Such is the case,
according to Stimilli’s view, of the very early Christian communities11; Lutheranism can be
another example. With regard to this, she (as well as other thinkers such as Agamben,
Foucault, Žižek12) individualises a particular role that is played in the Bible by the ancient
Greek word corresponding to nowadays economics, i.e. oekonomía. The use of this term in
Stimilli 2011, 83-94.
Stimilli 2011, 181-186.
8 About the meaning of “asceticism” in Stimilli and Weber, see Stimilli 2011, 111-133, 138155, 249-270; Weber 1991, 214-241.
9 Stimilli 2011, 84-94.
10 Löwith 1949.
11 Stimilli 2011, 83-133.
12 Agamben 2007, Foucault 2008, Žižek 2006.
6
7
many passages of the Bible seems to have no direct relation with the current meaning of the
word “economics”; it is rather used to indicate the “administration” or “management” of life’s
lack of meaning and imperfection. With regard to this, the early Christians’ radical awareness
about the imperfection of life and its lack of significance, urged them to define rules and moral
standard to be strictly followed before death, even without knowing whether this would be
really helpful for their salvation or not. In this sense, according to Stimilli, the believer’s whole
life becomes a sort of unquestioned investment whose costs can be seen quite clearly, but
whose advantages remain utterly unknown13. Nonetheless, the perspective of gaining such
advantages inflates the believer’s will, convincing him to pursue a life adherent to painful
moral standards and models, no matter how unsecure and ephemeral this whole investment
looks.
The dogmas of contemporary capitalism
It is now time to analyse aspects concerning the current economic system with particular
regard to debt, consumption, and growth.
Technically, debt is an instrument through which one, whose financial means are insufficient
to realise his or her business/life projects and ambitions, can, by deciding to take a degree of
risk, have access to these means, binding him or herself to return the amount under terms and
conditions agreed to. In today’s economic and political systems however, there are forms of
debt, whose binding force falls upon debtors independently from, or not fully considering,
their will. Debt can in very many cases be a condition imposed or encouraged by economic
and political systems: sovereign-debt is just the most notorious example. This essay will now
provide examples with particular regard to the negative repercussions of debt (both
individual an public) on the lives of those who hold it without either their full consent or
sound awareness of its real costs and advantages.
Credit institutions and governments have devised policies thanks to which everyone could
benefit from easy access to education loans; but government plans to make education more
accessible have not always been followed with attention to whether or not the job market can
accommodate all the graduates. One might say that achieving the alluring goal of increasing
the number of graduates through accessible credit was an easier way for politicians to secure
votes than their actually building a stable and solid economy. This, however, increased the
students’ ambitions; increased ambitions and consequently unrealistic career prospects, then,
persuaded many to fall into the trap of debt from a very young age. The negative emotional
costs of this dynamic can come from a dramatic fall of expectations straight after the degree,
deriving from the necessity to accept jobs that do not use the recently acquired knowledge.
One economic cost can be the inability of new graduates to pay back their loans, resulting in
additional public debt, which, as it was mentioned above, falls upon everyone without their
expressed consent.
Similar considerations can be applied also to the entrepreneurial sector: the expression
“financial crunch” refers to a particular situation in which credit is not made easily accessible
by banks; it is the gloomiest fear of entrepreneurs, for whom availability of new credit
becomes more a priority than finding sound solutions to the increasing losses. They boost
their companies’ leverage, expecting to attain a future state of definitive enfranchisement
from debt and perhaps hard work, so they condemn themselves to years of unnecessary
sufferings, deriving from unsustainable debt-loads. These entrepreneurs should be
acknowledged as heroes or perhaps even martyrs of nowadays, but they are not the only ones.
Parallel considerations should be applied to public sector workers who, in the last decade, had
to adapt to new standards of efficiency deriving from the imperative of reducing public
13
Stimilli 2011, 87-90.
expenditures. The former Italian ministers, Renato Brunetta - minister of “public
administration and innovation” - and Roberto Calderoli - minister of “normative
simplification” - promoted informative campaigns in which public sector employees were
officially addressed with the epithet of “fanulloni” (sluggards). This jargon referred to
categories of workers such as the already underpaid school-teachers often working in
problematic schools, train drivers who were suddenly working solely on trains that were
designed to be driven by two; but there are many other examples. The inability to adhere to
such increased requirements is often experienced by individuals as a sign of their own
imperfection or unfitness, with considerable emotional repercussions on their own lives.
As it should be noticed, human greed, which is frequently regarded as being one of the main
causes of the current economic crisis, is not the central concern of this essay. Greed as well as
milder or more obvious forms of corruption can exacerbate the above mentioned dynamics: a
corrupt meeting of entrepreneurial interests and political ones is often the basis of wrong and
costly decisions on how public money is spent, with negative repercussions on the economic
stability and soundness of entire countries. An example for this could be the management of
investments in the construction sector by institutions such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in
the US. Nonetheless, the most interesting aspect of Stimilli’s theory, constituting this essay’s
central issue, is the detection and description of a particular emotional pattern about
individuals’ unrealistic approach towards debt (both private and public); Stimilli’s theory
relies primarily on a psychological comprehension of the relation between people and debt14.
According to her, the problem of debt is never tackled in definitive ways by both governments
and individuals: debt can always be rearranged and restructured, but it is hardly ever
extinguished. Moreover, credit cards, small loans, capitalisation of the value of the family’s
house constituted final solutions for the capital to keep high levels of consumption,
notwithstanding the recession15. Another one is the totalising capacity of the productive and
service sectors to create not simply ways to satisfy the people’s needs, but directly new needs
to be satisfied, such as even newer mobile phones and applications, which have a strong
impact on the markets and society. New products carrying aesthetic/moral significance are
seen by consumers as realising the accomplishment of their ambitions and life expectations.
According to Stimilli, the capital’s capacity to transform the human ascetic needs of a meaning
or even a creed, into opportunities of boosting revenues reaches its most totalising realisation
in today’s consumerist society; such ascetic need becomes so crucial for individuals that they
easily decide to condemn themselves to the yoke of unsustainable debt-loads. But debt,
incompleteness, imperfection, fault, lack and often desperate research of a meaning, are,
within the lines of Stimilli’s thought, the distinctive elements of an utterly human way to
perceive life: an ascetic and potentially painful perception, especially in its harder religious
form16. Stimilli argues that human intellectual and material resources, such as work-force,
life-planning, the search for some meaning, religiosity, should all be liberated from the
capital’s grip, to return under the individual’s control17. In this sense, Stimilli’s contributions
to the current debate on religion and economics seem to individualise a promising and
innovative ground of inquiry into the meaning of concepts such as democracy and freedom
from a philosophical perspective. Finally, a critique of the imperative to increase growth, and
the redefinition of the models of development, with particular regard to its relation to
everyone’s real needs constitutes another side of the central objective of this essay, which is:
Stimilli 2011, 78.
Stimilli 2011, 80-82.
16 Stimilli 2011, 175-185.
17 Stimilli 2004.
14
15
the promotion of an ethical and political attitude of realism and awareness towards decisions
and acts, bearing important repercussions on everyone’s life.
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Foucault, M., Le gouvernement de soi et des autres. Cours au Collège de France, 1982-1983,
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Löwith, K., Meaning in History. The Theological Implications of Philosophy of History, University
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Plato, Phaedrus, Penguin Classics, London 1973.
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