Book ID: CBB037301213

The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity (2019)

unapi

McCarraher, Eugene (Author)


Belknap Press of Harvard University Press


Publication Date: 2019
Physical Details: xii + 799
Language: English

Far from displacing religions, as has been supposed, capitalism became one, with money as its deity. Eugene McCarraher reveals how Mammon ensnared us and how we can find a more humane, sacramental way of being in the world. If socialists and Wall Street bankers can agree on anything, it is the extreme rationalism of capital. At least since Max Weber, capitalism has been understood as part of the "disenchantment" of the world, stripping material objects and social relationships of their mystery and sacredness. Ignoring the motive force of the spirit, capitalism rejects the awe-inspiring divine for the economics of supply and demand. The author challenges this conventional view. Capitalism, he argues, is full of sacrament, whether or not it is acknowledged. Capitalist enchantment first flowered in the fields and factories of England and was brought to America by Puritans and evangelicals whose doctrine made ample room for industry and profit. Later, the corporation was mystically animated with human personhood, to preside over the Fordist endeavor to build a heavenly city of mechanized production and communion. By the twenty-first century, capitalism has become thoroughly enchanted by the neoliberal deification of "the market." Informed by cultural history and theology as well as economics, management theory, and marketing, The Enchantments of Mammon looks to nineteenth-century Romantics for salvation. The Romantic imagination favors craft, the commons, and sensitivity to natural wonder. It promotes labor that, for the sake of the person, combines reason, creativity, and mutual aid. McCarraher makes the case that capitalism has hijacked and redirected our intrinsic longing for divinity--and urges us to break its hold on our souls. (Publisher)

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Reviewed By

Review Stefan Schwarzkopf (Summer 2020) Review of "The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity". Business History Review (pp. 439-442). unapi

Citation URI
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Authors & Contributors
Berry, Evan
Amaeshi, Kenneth
Vause, Erika
Iversen, Torben
Robert John Schimelpfenig
Soskice, David
Concepts
Capitalism
Economic history
Business history
Religion
Modernity
Economics
Time Periods
19th century
21st century
20th century
Early modern
Modern
20th century, early
Places
United States
Southern states (U.S.)
France
Europe
Canada
India
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