Marx and Calvin

In her The Interpretation of Material Shapes in Puritanism: A Study of Rhetoric, Prejudice, and Violence (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture) , Ann Kibbey notes some intriguing parallels between Calvin’s sacramental theology and Marx’s concepts of commodity and fetishization: “In Marx’s theory, exchange value is the counterpart of the spiritual presence. Both Calvin and Marx perceive a contradiction between the ordinary use of an object and the value (spiritual or exchange) that it acquires upon consecration/circulation. Moreover, both Calvin and Marx warn of the dangers of fetishizing the object itself . . . Although Marx perceived analogies between religious and capitalist thought, he argued that ‘the religious world’ is the ‘reflex of the real world,’ not realizing the extent to which Protestant theologians such as Calvin valued material objects in their theology and conceived of material objects in a way directly analogous to the concept of commodities in the market.”