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

Eugene McCarraher

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The Enchantments of Mammon

How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity

Eugene McCarraher

Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 2019

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Eugene McCarraher challenges the conventional view of capitalism as a force for disenchantment. From Puritan and evangelical valorizations of profit to the heavenly Fordist city, the mystically animated corporation, and the deification of the market, capitalism has hijacked our intrinsic longing for divinity, laying hold to our souls.

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Extraordinary…Like MacIntyre, McCarraher both recognizes and detests capitalism’s spoliations of creation and disintegration of communities, and casts a fond, forlorn eye toward the possibility of restoring a rationality of genuine human life…A majestic achievement. It will enjoy a long posterity…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.
-- David Bentley Hart Commonweal

[A] monumental labor of love…There have been marvelous studies of contemporary capitalism published in recent years…But this is an extraordinary work of intellectual history as well as a scholarly tour de force, a bracing polemic, and a work of Christian prophecy…It is beautifully written and a magnificent read…McCarraher challenges more than 200 years of post-Enlightenment assumptions about the way we live and work…This mammoth portrait of the religious longings at the heart of secular materialism carries a bleak message: 20th-century fantasies of the world as one global business have been realized…Refreshingly original and splendidly pulled off.
-- The Observer

McCarraher’s book is more brilliant, more capacious, and more entertaining, page by page, than his most ardent fans dared hope. The magnitude of his accomplishment—an account of American capitalism as a religion that begins in early modernity and extends to the present, an analysis that goes far beyond the loose versions of this argument we’ve seen before (Economists are like clergy! The Fed is like a church!) and rewrites American intellectual history as it does so—will stun even skeptical readers…It is a wonder, an enchantment on a world that has so forgotten itself as to think enchantments rare.
-- Philip Christman Christian Century

A monumental, scholarly but also readable survey of how the champions of capitalism, their acolytes and foot soldiers—over and over, and with conspicuous success—reframed traditional religious longings and beloved communities as goals that could be achieved through the pursuit of profit…As enthralling a work of intellectual history as you could hope to read.
-- Michael Duggan Catholic Herald

A beguiling 800-page tour de force…[A] sweeping history…The author claims, with considerable evidence, that capitalism, too, is a form of worship, that it is a religion of modernity…Scintillating.
-- Donald Sassoon Church Times

A genuine delight to read…[A] searing excoriation of economics as it is currently practiced…An extraordinary book…It is difficult to characterize this book as anything but a masterpiece for its synthesis of intellectual history, anticapitalist polemic, and Romantic imagination. There is a great deal to be gained from McCarraher’s arguments.
-- Daniel Walden Current Affairs

One of the most impressive books I’ve ever read…The depth and range of McCarraher’s scholarship are incredible…A must-read for anyone serious about the mesmerizing power of capitalism.
-- Mark Dunbar The Humanist

A vitally important book…It could have an impact similar to Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue…Certainly it is a book people concerned about the state of the world and moral theology should be aware of…McCarraher…explains how capitalism has become the religion of the modern world…This detailed account of the idolatries of our age deserves wide readership and detailed examination.
-- Frank Litton Irish Catholic

The Enchantments of Mammon is a beautiful, stirring achievement. In a bold new synthesis ranging from early modern Europe to the contemporary United States, McCarraher challenges the received wisdom regarding the meanings of modernity and rationality, allowing us to look at familiar concepts in fresh and fruitful ways. This is truly a game-changer—the history of capitalism will never look the same again.
-- Jackson Lears, author of Rebirth of a Nation

With this book McCarraher aspires to nothing less than a history of the soul under capitalism. Far from living in a secular, disenchanted world, he argues, ours is a world of ‘misenchantment,’ in which longings for communion are perverted into a religion of plunder and technological control. Capitalism emerges here not as a system of market exchange or class domination but as an affront to the divine creation of which we are a part. An astonishing work of history and criticism.
-- Casey Nelson Blake, author of The Arts of Democracy

An intellectually ambitious, analytically insightful, engagingly well written, and unfashionably radical yet timely study of the relationship among capitalism, religion, society, and culture in the United States. McCarraher argues that modern capitalism has not been a secularizing movement from enchantment to disenchantment, but rather an alternative, competing form of enchantment. He is sharply critical of the underlying assumptions and damaging consequences of modern capitalism with its emphasis on extractive efficiency and profit-making. A powerful, impressive work.
-- Brad Gregory, author of The Unintended Reformation

A tour de force. McCarraher argues that capitalism is a successor faith, rather than a successor to faith. The capitalist faith in this telling is a heretical, blaspheming Black Mass of perverse sacramentality that sanctions domination by pretending to the status of immutable, impersonal laws of nature. In the world of economic enchantment masquerading as hard-eyed realism, McCarraher urges us to keep open an imaginative window through which to glimpse alternatives. His magnificent intellectual history recovers many such opportunities and invites us to appraise them with fresh eyes.
-- Bethany Moreton, author of To Serve God and Wal-Mart

Surveying the history of capitalism from seventeenth-century England to the mid-twentieth-century United States, McCarraher argues in this magisterial work that capitalism is a corruption of the sacramental nature of the world and our desire to flourish within it. The keenest insights and best hopes for a more humane world reside not within secular traditions but within the Romantic lineage of joy and participation. The Enchantments of Mammon is a towering achievement: an exquisitely crafted refusal of the metaphysics of the free market and reassurance that the conditions of human flourishing are well within our reach.
-- Charles Marsh, author of Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

McCarraher savages the sacralized fantasy of perpetual economic growth—purportedly guided by the dictates of reason—promulgated on the Left (Neo-liberalism and Socialism) and the Right. Against this worship of accumulation are set the admirable but futile efforts of those who, over time, have agitated against the idolatry of lucre. Is it possible for us to turn our eyes away from this false God?
-- Bill Marx Arts Fuse

Excellent…Argues for a Romanticism-inflected socialism…monumental.
-- John Ehrett Between Two Kingdoms

A fascinating book…which asserts, among other things, that capitalism is the religion of modernity.
-- Darrell Lackey Divergence

A magnificent work of historical scholarship, a thorough account of the rise of capitalism in the modern age. And yet it is not an economics tome, or even really a history, but rather a treatise on religion and the values that pervade society. It is also full of moral insights, with stinging critiques of a worldview that reduces human experience to opportunities for exchange…Highly readable.
-- The Interim

A thoughtful, beautifully written book, tracing the ways in which the values of capitalism—greed, productivity, competition, selfishness—became confounded with notions of divinity, and of God’s plan for and involvement in the lives of the divinity’s alleged favorite creation…Helps explain the hegemony of capitalist ideas in societies where religion is important even when the material interests of the working class ought clearly to expose the depravity and, for the religiously-minded, the ungodliness, of capitalism as actually practiced.
-- Alvin Finkel Labour

Much needed and much welcomed…The time into which McCarraher’s work speaks is a time perhaps readied to hear something different. A world enchanted by McDonald’s and administered by McDonnell-Douglas has begun to lose its shine, especially when it culminates in carnival hucksters parading as political, business, and religious leaders. It is time for a new and yet old word, a Christian socialism that resists the lure of capitalist enchantment.
-- D. Stephen Long and Tyler Womack Modern Theology

[An] immense work of historical synthesis.
-- Stuart Walton Review 31

A vigorous intellectual history that challenges conventional social-science assumptions about the modern world.
-- Christopher Clark Journal of Modern History

Fachgebiete

Geschichte Regionale und nationale Geschichte Nordamerika Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika

Frontmatter Öffentlich zugänglich PDF downloaden	i
Contents Öffentlich zugänglich PDF downloaden	ix
Prologue Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	1
Part One. The Dearest Freshness Deep Down Things: Capitalist Enchantment in Europe, 1600–1914
Introduction Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	19
1. About His Business: The Medieval Sacramental Economy, the Protestant Theology of “Improvement,” and the Emergence of Capitalist Enchantment Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	23
2. The God among Commodities: Christian Political Economy, Marx on Fetishism, and the Power of Money in Bourgeois Society Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	48
3. The Poetry of the Past: Romantic Anticapitalism and the Sacramental Imagination Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	67
Part Two. A Hundred Dollars, a Hundred Devils: Mammon in America, 1492–1870
Introduction Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	107
4. Errand into the Marketplace: The Puritan Covenant Theology of Capitalism Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	111
5. The Righteous Friends of Mammon: Evangelicals, Mormons, Slaveholders, and the Proprietary Dispensation Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	125
6. Glows and Glories and Final Illustriousness: Transcendentalism, the Religion of the Slaves, and the Romantic Imagination in Antebellum America Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	153
Part Three. The Mystical Body of Business: The Corporate Reconstruction of Capitalist Enchantment, 1870–1920
Introduction Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	177
7. God Gave Me My Money: The Incorporation of America and the Persistence of Evangelical Enchantment Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	183
8. The Soulful Corporation: Corporate Fetishism and the Incorporation of Enchantment Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	196
9. Blazers of the One True Way: Corporate Humanism, Management Theory, and the Mechanization of Communion Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	210
10. The Spirit of the Thing: Advertising and the Incorporation of the Beatific Vision Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	225
11. Modern Communion: Corporate Liberalism and Imperialist Eschatology Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	243
Part Four. The Beloved Commonwealth: Visions of Cooperative Enchantment, 1870–1920
Introduction Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	255
12. The Producers’ Jeremiad: The Populist Reformation of the Covenant Theology Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	261
13. The Cross Is Bending: The Socialist Jeremiad and the Covenant Theology Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	281
14. The Priesthood of Art: Anarchism, Arts and Crafts, and the Re-enchantment of the World Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	296
15. Another Kingdom of Being: The Crisis of Metaphysical Experience and the Search for Passionate Vision Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	328
Part Five. The Heavenly City of Fordism: Enchantment in the Machine Age, 1920–1945
Introduction Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	361
16. Business Is the Soul of America: The New Capitalism and the Business Millennium Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	367
17. The American Century and the Magic Kingdom: Mythologies of the Machine Age Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	379
18. A New Order and Creed: Human Relations as Fordist Moral Philosophy Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	393
19. Beauty as the New Business Tool: Advertising, Industrial Design, and the Enchantment of Corporate Modernism Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	402
Part Six. Predicaments of Human Divinity: Critics of Fordist Enchantment, 1920–1945
Introduction Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	427
20. The Mysticism of Numbers: Postwar Enthusiasm for Technocracy Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	433
21. Secular Prayers and Impieties: The Cultural Front as Migration of the Holy Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	440
22. Small Is Beautiful: The Religion of Small Property and Lewis Mumford’s Novum Organum Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	464
23. Human Divinity: F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Agee, and the Son of God Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	493
Part Seven. One Vast and Ecumenical Holding Company: The Prehistory of Neoliberal Enchantment, 1945–1975
Introduction Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	507
24. God’s in His Heaven, All’s Right with the World: The Political Economy of Containment and the Economic Theology of the Cold War Consensus Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	517
25. Machines of Loving Grace: Auguries of the Corporate Counterculture Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	537
26. The New Testament of Capitalism: The Resurgence of Evangelical Enchantment and the Theology of Neoliberalism Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	580
27. The Statues of Daedalus: Postmaterialism and the Failure of the Liberal Imagination Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	611
28. To Live Instead of Making History: Herbert Marcuse, Norman O. Brown, and the Romantic Eschatology of Immanence Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	622
29. Heaven Which Exists and Is Everywhere around Us: The Sacramental Vision of Postwar Utopians Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	634
Epilogue Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	663
Notes Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	681
Acknowledgments Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	789
Index Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert PDF downloaden	793

Informationen zur Veröffentlichung

Seiten und Bilder/Illustrationen im Buch

eBook veröffentlicht am:

12. November 2019

eBook ISBN:

9780674242760

Seiten und Bilder/Illustrationen im Buch

Inhalt:

768

https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674242760

eBook ISBN: 9780674242760

Schlagwörter für dieses Buch

romanticism; karl marx; commodity fetishism; bourgeois; sacramental imagination; protestantism; transcendentalism; production; labor; slavery; corporation; neoliberalism; advertising; communion; populism; socialism; anarchism; eschatology; fordism; technocracy; secularization; counterculture

The Enchantments of Mammon

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