The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity
Eugene McCarraher
Aug 2020 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Paul Boehmer
headphones
Audiobook
34 hr 57 min
Unabridged
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
Want a 3 hr 29 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline.
Add
About this audiobook
If socialists and Wall Street bankers can agree on anything, it is the extreme rationalism of capital. Ignoring the motive force of the spirit, capitalism rejects the awe-inspiring divine for the economics of supply and demand. Eugene McCarraher 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." The Enchantments of Mammon looks not to Marx and progressivism but 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. In this impassioned challenge, 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.
About the author
Eugene McCarraher is associate professor of humanities at Villanova University and the author of Christian Critics: Religion and the Impasse in Modern American Social Thought. He has written for Dissent and the Nation and contributes regularly to Commonweal, the Hedgehog Review, and Raritan.
Paul Boehmer is a seasoned actor who has appeared on Broadway, film, and television, including The Thomas Crown Affair and All My Children. Coinciding with another of his passions, sci-fi, Paul has been cast in various roles in many episodes of Star Trek.
Rate this audiobook
Tell us what you think.
Listening information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
