The Enchantments of Mammon : How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity

"A majestic achievement...It is a work of great moral and spiritual intelligence, and one that invites contemplation about things we can't afford not to care about deeply." --Commonweal

"An extraordinary work of intellectual history as well as a scholarly tour de force, a bracing polemic, and a work of Christian prophecy...McCarraher challenges more than 200 years of post-Enlightenment assumptions about the way we live and work." --The Observer

At least since Max Weber, capitalism has been understood as part of the "disenchantment" of the world, stripping material objects and social relations of their mystery and spiritual magic. Eugene McCarraher challenges this conventional view. Capitalism, he argues, is full of sacrament, whether one is prepared to acknowledge it or not.

First flowering in the fields and factories of England and brought to America by Puritans and evangelicals, whose doctrine made ample room for industry and profit, capitalism has become so thoroughly enmeshed in the fabric of our society that it is deified by neoliberal faith in "the market." Informed by cultural history and theology as well as economics, management theory, and marketing, The Enchantments of Mammon looks not to Marx and progressivism but to nineteenth-century Romantics for salvation.

The Romantic imagination promotes labor that combines reason, creativity, and mutual aid. In this impassioned challenge to some of our most firmly held assumptions, McCarraher argues that capitalism has hijacked and redirected our intrinsic longing for divinity--and urges us to break its hold on our souls.