Always keen on human sacrifice

 Constant explained the Indian phallus cult as part and parcel of priestly corruption that aimed to exploit religious sentiments of ordinary believers: the “lingam becomes a sacred object…when a solemn ceremony has confined the god within the newly sculpted idol.”16 It was, according to Constant, “not the religious sentiment that forced…the daughters of India to engage in lascivious dances before the Lingam; it was the priests of this obscene divinity.” This priestly exploitation could be found also in “female Babylonians” who “prostitute[d] themselves,” or “Syrian women” at the ceremonies of Adonis at Byblos who “offered the sacrifice of their chastity. Peoples subjected to priests passed from abasement to license, and from orgies to despair.… The phallus was planted on sepulchers, and the same phallus was drenched in blood.”17

Marx did not fail to notice that Constant captured the religious motivation behind fetish worship in terms of a “commercial exchange that man establishes…with his god.” The fetishist “looks to see if this god has adequately acquitted itself of the engagements he supposedly contracted. And if the balance does not square, the worshipper abandons or punishes the deity, strikes it or breaks it, consigns it to the flames or the deep.”

Constant’s condemnation of fetishism stemmed from his belief that fetishism “reduced” religion to “commerce” and “profitability.” Counterposing “disinterested…sentiment” on one side, and egoistic “interest” on the other, Constant went on to argue that religious adherents move “from one fetish to another, always seeking a more faithful ally, a more powerful protector, a more zealous accomplice.… The fetish is a greedy, egotistical being allied to a human being as egotistical as it is, although weaker. The sacrifices it rewards only refer to it. The duties it imposes consist in victims, in offerings, and in expressions of submission—agreed-upon currency that will be required in the future. It is payment demanded by the fetish for the protection it accords.”