The intellectual landscape of our era is defined by a fascinating paradox. On one hand, society remains deeply committed to a scientific, materialist critique of the world, yet on the other, it seems to many observers that we are witnessing a profound return of the religious. At the heart of this possible modern cultural shift lies a renewed dialogue between three historic figures whose legacies were once thought to be mutually exclusive: Jesus Christ, Karl Marx, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

By weaving together Hegel’s logic, Marx’s economic theories, and the concept of kenosis—the self-emptying of the divine—that has developed in many Christian traditions, some modern thinkers are discovering a shared consistency that addresses the deep identity crises of twenty-first-century life and the global pressures of capitalism. This evolving perspective provides one possible framework for a secular faith, with the person and teachings of Jesus the Christ offering an ethical foundation upon which the grand political projects of Hegel and Marx can be built.

To understand how the modern intersection of Christ and Marx works, one must first look through the lens of Hegel’s philosophy of religion, particularly as rather creatively reinterpreted by the contemporary philosopher Slavoj Žižek. On this reading of Hegel, the arrival of the man who would become the Christ represents a profound cosmic moment where the divine spirit steps out of the abstract clouds and enters into the messy, limited reality of human existence. Žižek takes this a step further by arguing that the “Death of God” on the cross is not simply the disappearance of the divine, but the precise moment God experiences what it feels like to be an atheist. When Jesus cries out in agony asking why he has been forsaken, the divine experiences the radical, terrifying gap of its own non-existence. This painful transition shifts spiritual authority away from a distant ruler in the sky and births the immanent Holy Spirit, which these philosophers redefine as the active community of believers working together.

At this point, Žižek is free-styling: the cry of dereliction (only in Mark) is never attributed to God, and only in the late twentieth century do theologians start to make that rather remarkable connection. “God experiences what it feels like to be an atheist” is provocative, which is how we know we’re reading Žižek.

In this framework, Christ represents the ultimate alienation of God into humanity. By dying on the cross, the distant master vanishes, leaving behind human collective agency to shape history. Many point out that Marx’s later critique of religion was actually a radical expansion of this Hegelian logic. Where Hegel believed humanity would find its ultimate peace and reconciliation within the structure of the political state, Marx looked closely at the world and saw ongoing economic alienation.

This relationship is often oversimplified by reducing  Marx’s legacy to his famous catchphrase that religion is the “opium of the people.” In truth, his work was a deep critique of the material world rather than a simple attack on faith. For Marx, the inverted, fantasy world of religious mythology was a mirror image of the inverted reality of capitalism, where dead labor—which we call capital, machinery, and corporate wealth—rules over living, breathing workers. These dynamics form what Žižek calls the “theology of the commodity,” a phenomenon where inanimate objects seem to possess magical social powers while the real humans who made them are ignored.

Consider how this plays out on a regular basis when a consumer buys a brand-new smartphone. People will camp outside stores overnight, treating a sleek piece of glass and metal like a sacred relic capable of bringing them status and joy. Meanwhile, the actual human beings extracting raw materials or working grueling hours in overseas factories remain invisible to the consumer. The object is given an almost divine personality, while the living worker is reduced to an invisible cog in a machine.

In our current era, this tension has fueled a massive revival of Hegelian Marxism, led by scholars like Nathan Brown, who seek to reunite Marx’s economic sharpness with Hegel’s focus on personal and social freedom. This aligns naturally with Liberation Theologians, such as José Porfirio Miranda , who have long argued that the biblical concept of a “preferential option for the poor” is the spiritual equivalent of Marx identifying the working class as the driver of human liberation. Within this synthesis, the radical teachings of Jesus regarding the poor are not treated as polite suggestions for occasional charity but are recognized as the primary engine for historical transformation.

The conceptual bridge linking these three pillars is kenosis, the voluntary self-emptying of power. In Hegel’s philosophy, God empties Godself of heavenly authority to share in human suffering. As Žižek emphasizes, this self-emptying represents the true birth of democracy, forcing the realization that no external superhero is coming to save us, thereby redistributing responsibility to the community.. The Holy Spirit becomes the emotional and social bond of a revolutionary group that steps up after the master is gone.  Marx localizes this self-emptying in the working class—the people who, by owning nothing under the law, end up representing the universal interests of humanity.

Thinkers such as Enrique Dussel  argue that modern global capitalism operates like a religion of death, requiring constant human sacrifice in the form of extreme overwork and poverty just to keep corporate markets satisfied. When these ideas intersect, the results are revolutionary: Jesus provides the deep ethical mandate of self-sacrifice, Marx delivers the structural blueprint of systemic greed, and Hegel offers the logical framework to push through the negative struggles of history.

In our current digital landscape, this philosophical struggle has moved directly onto our screens. Every time a user scrolls through a social media feed, highly advanced algorithms exploit dopamine triggers to maximize corporate ad revenue. The user is no longer just a consumer; their behavior, time, and attention are mined like raw coal. Yet this digital self-emptying also contains the seeds of its own subversion.

This resistance forms what Martin Hägglund calls a secular faith. Because our time on this earth is strictly finite, reclaiming our hours from the digital grind becomes a sacred act of liberation. True freedom in this universe is not the shallow ability to choose between brands, but a deep break from treating ourselves like products to be bought and sold.

Thinkers like Alain Badiou look to the Apostle Paul as the ultimate prototype of this revolutionary attitude, defined by total loyalty to a radical break from the status quo. Freedom is transformed from simple consumer choice into a shared human capacity to physically reshape the material world, echoing the early Christian church’s view (such as the principle of omnia sunt communia, that all goods are to be held in common, as presented in Acts chapters 2 and 4) that the free development of each person is the absolute condition for the free development of all. (Paul may or may not have followed through on his vision, but his rhetoric of equality is significant.)

While Hegel provides the grand logic and Marx provides the mechanical critique of social institutions, it is the figure of Jesus, in my opinion, who injects the vital pulse and the ultimate purpose into this modern synthesis. Without this element, Hegel’s philosophy risks treating human beings as abstract chess pieces in history, and Marx’s theories can devolve into a cold, utilitarian machine of state power. It is only through the explicit focus on the infinite value of the individual—the theological defense of the least of these—that the struggle remains human and redemptive.

The teachings of Jesus thus can be seen as serving as a direct corrective to the potential extremes of both idealistic philosophy and raw economic materialism. Where a philosopher might justify the suffering of entire generations for the abstract progress of a nation, Christ demands immediate compassion for the individual sufferer and offers radical love as the cure. Where a political theorist might reduce a human being to an economic production unit, Christ asserts an inherent dignity that transcends a person’s utility to a market.

In our contemporary world, this intellectual intersection is a practical call to imitate that radical empathy. The most inspiring element of the Marxist dream—the desire for a world free from exploitation—is, at its core, a secular adaptation of the Kingdom of God. The conclusion of this great historical struggle is not found in the growth of the state or the expansion of the market, but in a community defined by agape, or self-giving love.

Works Consulted

Badiou, A. (2003). Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism. Stanford University Press.

Brown, Nathan. (2019). The Revival of Hegelian Marxism. Radical Philosophy.

Dussel, E. (2003). Beyond Philosophy: Ethics, History, Marxism, and Liberation Theology. Rowman & Littlefield.

Hägglund, M. (2019). This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom. Pantheon.

Haidt, J. (2024). The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Penguin Press.

Hegel, G. W. F. (1977). Phenomenology of Spirit (A. V. Miller, Trans.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1807).

Marx, K. (1970). Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (J. O’Malley, Ed. & Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1844).

Miranda, J. P. (1980). Marx and the Bible: A Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression. Orbis Books.

Žižek, S. (2000). The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? Verso.

Žižek, S. (2003). The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity. MIT Press.

Žižek, S. (2009). The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? MIT Press.

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Billionaire donors, votes for corporate handouts, lack of socialist ID, and last-minute effort make a Donavan McKinney endorsement the wrong move

By Anthony D.

Metro Detroit DSA members will be asked at the June 13 General Meeting to vote on the endorsement of current State Representative Donavan McKinney’s campaign for U.S. Congress, just two weeks before absentee ballots go out for the August 4 primary. McKinney has had no significant prior relationship with the chapter. His track record as a State Representative includes voting for billions of dollars in corporate handouts and accepting campaign donations from billionaires and corporate PACs.

McKinney is not running as a democratic socialist and a DSA endorsement this close to Election Day would be a significant backslide into the pre-Bernie era of our organization, when our chapter routinely endorsed progressive Democrats whose campaigns we played no major part in building.

What Are We Building?

As DSA evaluates candidates for endorsement, we should consider how they fit into our broader electoral project and its goals. While consensus is rare in DSA, the various political tendencies within it seem to agree that we want DSA to act like a party. We want DSA’s infrastructure and identity to be clearly independent from the Democratic Party. We believe this is necessary to distance ourselves from politicians who would argue that capitalism is not the problem. We want DSA to be a vehicle towards the transformation of society in which the working class has full democratic control of our government, economy, and workplaces.

The type of party and its character remain up for debate, but DSA members expect the candidates that we run will differentiate themselves from Democrats by being clear that our goal is to win socialism. To that end, the 2025 and 2026 election cycles have seen an unprecedented number of DSA-endorsed candidates around the country running for office and publicly identifying as democratic socialists in their campaigns, after having spent many years organizing inside DSA.

DSA endorsements are unlike those given out by individual politicians or nonprofit organizations that simply act as a rubber stamp of approval based on personal relationships or the policies the candidates are running on. Instead, DSA endorsements are material commitments to run members of our party for office. Rather than relying on progressive candidates to come to us with campaigns that are already fully formed as we did during DSA’s pre-Bernie era, the best DSA candidates’ campaigns are conceived of within DSA and engage members to run them themselves. These campaigns are driven by DSA members who fundraise, write the platform, determine the messaging, run the canvasses, build a social media presence, phonebank, knock doors, and design the flyers we hand out. Through this process, the candidates we run remain rooted in DSA and act as an extension of the movement.

Unfortunately, McKinney and his campaign are none of these things. He has no experience organizing in or with DSA. His campaign did not grow out of the chapter and is not being run by DSA members. His social media and campaign literature include no mention of being a democratic socialist and his website was updated sometime since May 31 to add it.

Track Record

McKinney has served as a State Representative since 2023, so it’s useful to review his past campaign donations and how he’s voted while in office. During his 2022 and 2024 campaigns, he accepted donations from various billionaires, corporations, and corporate PACs including:

• $1,000 in 2022 and $500 in 2023 from billionaire Matthew Moroun, a prolific Republican Party and Trump campaign donor as well as the owner of the Ambassador Bridge who allegedly conspired with the Trump administration to attempt to block the rival Gordie Howe International Bridge from opening
• $1,250 from Ida Byrd-Hill, CEO of Automation Workz, whose company created SenseiiWyze, “an AI-powered behavioral intelligence platform that predicts warfighter and front-liner technology readiness under pressure”, according to her LinkedIn page
• $500 from JC Huizenga, who created National Heritage Academies, a for-profit company that runs 103 charter schools in nine states
• $1,000 from Jim George, whose development company was awarded a $5 million grant in the state budget for a housing project without any competitive bidding
• $2,000 from Realtors PAC of Michigan, whose top contributor is Morgan Stanley
• $1,750 from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan
• $1,050 from billionaires Tom and Theresa Preston-Werner. Tom Preston-Werner, the founder of GitHub, was forced to resign in 2014 over allegations of harassment by a former employee.
• $500 from Detroit Regional Chamber PAC, who shaped polls to promote former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan for Governor, then endorsed him. The Detroit Regional Chamber recently joined a coalition to promote data centers.

In the state legislature, McKinney has voted for billions of dollars in corporate handouts. This included a vote to send $1.4 billion into the Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve (SOAR) Fund, a corporate slush fund administered by a public-private partnership agency that requires lawmakers to sign non-disclosure agreements and has produced only 1,846 jobs as of October 2025. A separate vote sent $630 million to the site of Ford’s battery plant in Marshall and another $170 million into the SOAR fund. Ford’s battery plant has created just 100 jobs thus far and the SOAR fund has been killed entirely. McKinney has voted with Helena Scott, opponent of DSA-endorsed candidate Chris Gilmer-Hill, 99% of the time. He has not endorsed Chris Gilmer-Hill despite their overlapping districts.

McKinney, to his credit, said all the right things during his interview with the Electoral Committee to try to move us to action on his behalf. During the Q&A, he committed to coordinating on votes with Rashida Tlaib, if elected, and to identifying as a democratic socialist on his campaign literature, website, and social media.

However, McKinney launched his campaign in April 2025, making it more than a year old, and there has been nothing stopping him from identifying as a democratic socialist before now, without our endorsement. It seems unlikely that just a few weeks before absentee ballots go out, he would revamp his campaign, literature, and website, with very little time to reach voters with brand-new messaging. If he’s had a sudden change of heart, that’s admirable, and would be indicative of DSA’s progress. But his track record in Lansing should concern us about whether or not he’s ready to meaningfully change course on his politics. His actions weigh stronger than his last-minute words.

It’s Too Late

With more time, these shortcomings could be overcome by developing a relationship with McKinney and moving him closer to our politics. But Metro Detroit DSA has never endorsed a candidate this close to Election Day in its post-Bernie era. Absentee ballots will arrive to voters just two weeks after our June General Meeting. With two-thirds of voters voting by absentee in Michigan, there’s no opportunity to do anything other than knock doors for an already set-in-stone campaign, with its literature already printed and ads bought. At best, a few thousand doors knocked may translate to a few hundred votes in a primary election that saw 81,125 votes in 2024, which would equate to less than 0.25% of the total votes cast. DSA’s endorsement will be essentially irrelevant to the outcome. Endorsing now and claiming a DSA victory if McKinney wins would be lying to ourselves and to our base.

Table 1 below shows how the timing of our potential endorsement would compare to that of our past endorsements dating back to 2020. McKinney would be the latest we have ever endorsed a candidate, just seven days before absentee ballots are mailed out and 129 days later than our average endorsement date. Compared to the timing of congressional candidate endorsements by other DSA chapters around the country, McKinney’s endorsement would be 89 days later than the average of the 18 candidates.

Changing our approach to endorse a campaign that is more than a year old would indicate to future candidates that they do not need to get involved in DSA and our organizing work in order to win our endorsement. It limits us in the future to reacting to candidates that come to us with a fully formed campaign — including campaigns that do not share DSA’s politics — rather than bringing the candidates into the organization and developing them into lifelong socialist organizers who we then run for office as an extension of our party. It signals that it is acceptable for DSA-endorsed candidates to act individually, deciding to run for office and building their campaign and its messaging on their own without our organization and its collective process behind them.

Learning From The Past

Admittedly, we would not have endorsed Rashida Tlaib in 2018 according to the criteria that I’m advocating we apply to McKinney in 2026. But DSA has matured, our organizers are far more experienced, and we are eight years removed from the lessons learned in a pre-Bernie era. That era saw our chapter hand out numerous endorsements to various liberal and progressive candidates like Kat Bruner James and Abraham Aiyash that did not pan out.

In 2019, Kat Bruner James, running for Ferndale City Council, said during our endorsement interview process that she would run on a slate with our other two endorsed candidates. She later turned heel and instead ran on an opposing Democratic establishment slate when it opened a better lane to victory. The chapter voted unanimously to pull her endorsement and she was elected ahead of our candidate.

In 2020, Abraham Aiyash, running for State Representative in Hamtramck, said during the endorsement interview process that he “was not going to Lansing to make friends.” In 2022, when Michigan Democrats took full control of the state legislature for the first time since 1984, Aiyash became the Majority House Leader and used the position to pressure other Democrats to vote for billions in corporate handouts.

We’re lucky to have Rashida, but she was a rare exception back then, within a flawed approach to socialist electoral politics in which we took too many unfamiliar candidates at their word.

Looking Forward

When Dylan Wegela ran for State Representative in 2022 and applied for our endorsement, our Electoral Committee voted against moving his endorsement forward because he had no prior relationship with the chapter and was running in a district in which only five DSA members resided. We asked him to prove himself in the state legislature and to keep showing up to DSA events. Immediately after taking office, he was the single hold-out vote (McKinney voted yes) for a tax policy bill that included $1.4 billion in corporate handouts. Dylan publicly held firm against Democratic Party leadership even as they threatened to punish him (by undoing the cancellation of public school debt for one of the cities in his district).

The chapter later endorsed Dylan in part due to this principled stance. He became an active member of the chapter and has been a leader in recruiting and training more socialist organizers in his district, creating a model of what legislators can do when they strongly identify as socialists and see themselves as organizers.

As DSA grows, more candidates and elected officials will want to join our movement. We should welcome them, but endorsing someone with a questionable track record that very few of us have any relationship with is antithetical to our strategy for winning socialism. We should take the same careful approach with McKinney that we did with Dylan, by declining to endorse him and asking that we maintain an organizing relationship. If he wins, we could revisit the endorsement in 2028 when he’s become involved with the chapter and we can meaningfully shape his re-election campaign and the outcome.

Anthony D. has been active in the chapter’s electoral and labor organizing work since 2019 and is a member of the Bread & Roses caucus. He previously served as the chapter’s co-chair during the 2021–2022 term.

He’s currently active in Socialists Organizing Western Wayne (SOWW), a geographic working group that was created to organize locally alongside our Socialists in Office (SIOs) — Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, State Representative Dylan Wegela, and Westland City Council President Mike McDermott — where their districts overlap in Westland, Romulus, Inkster, and Garden City.

Too Little, Too Late: Against a Donavan McKinney Endorsement was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.