This is from the first volume of Marx’s Kapital, Chapter 14:
The division of labour within society brings into contact independent producers of commodities, who acknowledge no authority other than that of competition, of the coercion exerted by the pressure of their reciprocal interests, just as in the animal kingdom the “war of all against all” more or less preserves the conditions of existence of every species. The same bourgeois consciousness which celebrates the division of labour in the workshop, the lifelong annexation of the worker to a partial operation, and his complete subjection to capital, as an organization of labour that increases its productive power, denounces with equal vigour every conscious attempt to control and regulate the process of production socially, as an inroad upon such sacred things as the rights of property, freedom and the self-determining “genius” of the individual capitalist. It is very characteristic that the enthusiastic apologists of the factory system have nothing more damning to urge against a general organization of labour in society than that it would turn the whole of society into a factory.
A more recent capitalist objection to conscious regulation of production is the usual harping on about the failures of the Soviet command economy, such harping revealing a studied lack of imagination: as if the only conceivable alternative to market-as-god must be the undemocratic bureaucracy-as-god.
But more importantly, translating Marx’s view of capitalist competition into religious terminology, one might say this competition is the capitalist form of idolatry. The effect is not simply that this false god, competition, demands and gets his supposedly rightful place in the scheme of things, but that he demands the right to invade and conquer and transform into his own likeness all non-competitive relationships. Competition does not demand to be a god among gods, but the god, before which there shall be no other.
This is one reason why I speak so often about hell. Ultimately, beneath a belief in infernalism is a kind of spiritual competitiveness, a demand that the universe be functioning as a system of scarcity (economics often being defined in the capitalist mindset as “competition for scarce resources”) which necessitates, even justifies competition. “If there is enough salvation to go around for everyone, if we all will get God’s undying love forever, how could that love be worth anything?” is the plaintive and unspoken cry of the infernalist. While accusing universalists of presumption (as if trust in God’s love simply had to be presumption, for some reason) the infernalist reveals a pride which does not want any salvation so bountiful that everybody gets it. Where is the distinction in that? Where is the achievement? While the infernalist may go on about her unworthiness to be saved, her redemption being the product of God’s grace alone, she secretly feels she really has accomplished something, if she ends up in eternal bliss while others end up in the fiery pit.
This soteriology is a zero-sum game which pretends to be something better. For the infernalist is not usually so vulgar as to say that there are only so many seats in heaven and a certain number of individuals must therefor be damned no matter what happens. Theoretically, according to many infernalists, everyone has the power to accept God’s grace and thereby be saved, and therefor there is no reason why not everyone will, in fact, be saved, other than that there will likely be those who reject the grace, entirely of their own free will, of course.
But the infernalist well suspects in his schema that there will not only be the damned, but likely quite a few of them. Human “freedom,” as he conceives it, is not only necessary to make salvation worth anything (God does not want predetermined “robots” in heaven, is the claim) but also pretty much makes universal salvation impossible. If we are not free to choose damnation, salvation is nothing. And if we are truly free to choose damnation, it is pretty much inevitable in this schema that some shall. In this outlook, therefor, God is relieved of any blame for having limited the number of the saved, while the infernalist gets the proud and secret satisfaction of rescuing heaven from meaninglessness: without the damnation of some, the salvation of any is worthless. The demand of pride that zero sum philosophy prevail over the universe is satisfied, while the Creator is held blameless of any limits placed on his generosity. The hypocrisy is blatant.
Competition in the economic or soteriological sphere creates a need for hell: economically, or eschatologically. And it may well be the case that Christianity’s training of humanity to accept hell on an eschatological level made it easier to accept hell on the factory floor or in the office cubicle.