Such capitalist class dominance of civil society in the service of its own
interests also is the essence of the neo-liberal/neo-conservative theory and
praxis that has gained dominance in the social totality of the United States
and in many Western European countries. It is the driving rationale behind
the globalization of transnational corporate interests, which is increasingly
called a continuation of Western “imperialism” (Radice 2005; Harvey 2003;
Cox, 2002; Halliday 2002; Sutcliffe 2002; Wood 2002; Petras & Veltmeyer 2005,
2001). This exploitive capitalist system, steered in the interests of ever-increas-
ing wealth and power for the capitalist class, is in the process of colonizing
the life-world of the inter-subjective formation of the human psyche as well
as of the social realm of culture on a global scale. According to proponents
of Rational Choice Theory, this instrumental and strategically conceived ratio-
nality and praxis of the solus ipsehas now been audaciously imputed to be
the dominate dynamic and purpose behind the socio-historical development
of religion, primarily that of Christianity (Sharot 2002; Stark 1996).
Religion as Commodity
The developed critique of this truly “sacrilegious” (Stark 1996:4) distortion
of the meaning and purpose of religion in general, and of the prophetic, eman-
cipatory, eschatological religions of Judaism and Christianity in particular,
which attempts to bring them into conformity with this positivistic theory,
goes beyond the scope of this article. Yet, it must be said that the advocates
of Rational Choice Theory extraneously and thereby artificially apply this
bourgeois paradigm of the isolated subject and the resulting positivistic
method of a self-serving, strategic, if not authoritarian rationality, with which
individuals seek to maximize the benefits of their decisions and actions over
and against cost, to their sociological study of religion. This so-called para-
digm does not grow out of the political-theological substance, morality or
hope of religion itself, particularly that of the prophetic religions of Judaism
and Christianity. From a dialectical materialistic perspective, Rational Choice’s
micro-sociological and economic theory is derived from and ideologically
functions to legitimate the “macro” system and structures of the capitalist
production and reproduction process and its civil society. In this theory, the
notion of the self-centered and self-serving bourgeois as the paradigm of
human nature, values and action are used to explain and implicitly justify
the social functioning of capitalist markets and their various “economies”
The Notion of the Totally “Other” • 125