An edition of Enchantments of Mammon (2019)

Enchantments of Mammon

How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity

  • 7 Want to read
Enchantments of Mammon
Eugene McCarraher, Eugene McCa ...
Locate

My Reading Lists:

Create a new list

  • 7 Want to read

Buy this book

Last edited by MARC Bot
April 2, 2026 | History
An edition of Enchantments of Mammon (2019)

Enchantments of Mammon

How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity

  • 7 Want to read

"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"--

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
768

Buy this book

Edition Availability
Cover of: Enchantments of Mammon
Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity
2022, Harvard University Press
in English
Cover of: Enchantments of Mammon
Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity
2019, Harvard University Press
in English
Cover of: Enchantments of Mammon
Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity
2019, Harvard University Press
in English

Add another edition?

Book Details


Classifications

Library of Congress
, HB501 .M443 2019, HB501 .M443 2019eb

Edition Identifiers

Open Library
OL28726584M
ISBN 13
9780674984615
LCCN
2019015075
OCLC/WorldCat
1108816699, 1122911389

Work Identifiers

Work ID
OL21212666W

Community Reviews (0)

No community reviews have been submitted for this work.

Lists

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON