The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity.
By Eugene McCarraher. Cambridge, MA and London, UK: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 2019. 799 pp. $39.95
Every bookworm friend of mine complains about their impossibly long, ever-growing list of must-reads. Because of that, I surmise that many of them would take one look at Eugene McCarraher’s 800-page Enchantments of Mammon and say, who has time to read that? But that would be a travesty; for its thickness speaks to substance of an extraordinary kind. Sure, the reading gets tedious at times; any book that requires a dictionary on hand can be tiresome. But if readers dare to exercise their literary muscles on this one, they will find themselves overjoyed at the complex juncture of history, philosophy, political science, theology, spirituality, and economics. Enchantments is an experience. The more I allowed myself to transcend the mind to engage the text, the more I understood it. I know, it doesn’t make sense. But if you are willing to scale this mountain of a book, the “reader’s high” awaits you at the top.
Enchantments is beautifully written, even as it takes on what many would consider a not-so-beautiful, complex yawner of a topic—the economic system of American capitalism (and its spread throughout the world). As an historian, McCarraher frames the book accordingly, as he traces the development of capitalism from its European roots to the American experiment to the present day. In his summary words, “America has always been a Business Civilization, from the Puritan errand into the marketplace to the evangelical contract with the unrighteous Mammon, from the immaculate conception of the ‘soulful corporation’ to the heavenly city of Fordism, from the mechanical futuramas of industrial designers to the cybernetic sublime of computer engineers and techno-entrepreneurs, from the first advertising animators of commodities to the shamans of the postmodern spectacle” (669).
His thesis is that capitalism has evolved through the centuries into a full-fledged spirituality, that it has unabashedly functioned as a religion with its own set of values, doctrines, and vision of the good life—along with its own industries, educational institutions, preachers, and evangelists. This book frames capitalism as metaphysics. Supposedly a pillar of Enlightenment based secularization, capitalism belies its nature by having “its own ensemble of gods, sacraments, and spiritual devotions” (83). This “secular religion” of neoliberal economics has secured itself in the American ethos and increasingly throughout the world through the machinations of globalization. Like any religion, the American-dream-turned-global-dream demands the loyalty of both producers and consumers all over the planet.
As such, the religion of Mammon competes with the religion of Jesus. McCarraher essentially makes the case that capitalism today is, thus far, Mammon’s best attempt to dethrone God. It was, of course, Jesus who taught that, “You cannot love God and wealth” (Mt. 6:24). Unfortunately, instead of opposing capitalism, the church through the centuries has sanctified it, and even helped to build it up. Max Weber’s thesis in the classic, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism comes to mind.
The term “Christendom” refers to the church’s unholy affair with the state. As it turns out, the church had another affair—an illicit relationship with the marketplace. Its enchanting affect, however, was and is certainly not limited to Christians or religious people; indeed, the spirit of Mammon has ignored the secular-religious line, possessing people, from devout Christians to atheists, with relative ease.
Besides simply offering a historically based critique of Western capitalism, does McCarraher have a larger agenda? If he does, it is not to offer the latest apologetic for the Left. As he explains, “I wrote this book in part out of a belief that many on the ‘left’ continue to share far too much with their antagonists: an ideology of ‘progress’ defined as unlimited economic growth and technological development...” (17). McCarraher’s agenda transcends Left/Right politics, as he takes on the core elements of Mammon—self-interest, accumulation, greed, competition, power, and so on—as these things have shaped cultural narratives, social structures, and state policies. By hovering above the political divides with its critique, this book is sure to offend all, regardless of political leanings.
Furthermore, Enchantments transcends the tired approaches to the capitalism versus socialism debate. Positively, what McCarraher advocates is not a Marxist-based socialism, which was and is every bit power-based, mechanistic, subhuman, and atheistic as its rival, market-based economics. Rather, he harks back to a Romantic sacramentalism as the less traveled but promising road to a new socioeconomic order. Romantic sacramentalism views the material world, most certainly including humankind, as reflecting the Divine. Through such lenses, God is present in creation. God is present in people. We would treat each other with great care. The commonwealth—the well-being of all—would be paramount. Work would be viewed as an opportunity for creativity and service as opposed to mass production and self-aggrandizement. Creation is the abundant source of all that sustains human and nonhuman life, and as such, it is to be stewarded well for the welfare of all. Imagination, creativity, compassion, justice, and caring for any and all who have need (Acts 2:44) would shape and drive society, in contrast to class hierarchy, ecocide, deadening numbness at work, life in the rat race, and looking out for Number 1.
Is this idyllic picture simply communism put to poetry? Indeed, “Romantic sacramentalism has evoked communist, anarchist, and artisanal visions...” (676); but this kind of “old school communism” (87), as McCarraher describes it, never resulted in the dehumanizing and brutal regimes of what the world witnessed in the twentieth century in the name of communism. To the proponents of Marxist communism past and present, I hear McCarraher ask rhetorically, “Are destruction, dehumanization, and death really the way to a just socio-economic order?”
I find McCarraher’s vision compelling. Along with him, I long for a world in which the love of God and the commonwealth (our neighbor) defines the social order. I am evangelical enough to believe that that “perfect world” will not happen this side of the Parousia. However, from my read, McCarraher’s vision aligns beautifully with the biblical vision of the kingdom of God, and in that I will continue to hope and live out to the best of my imperfect ability. In fact, I am surprised that he did not discuss the person and teaching of Jesus among the many other key people—e.g. John Ruskin—and movements—e.g., the Arts and Crafts movement. I suppose if he did, Enchantments would have indeed been a theological treatise rather than the interdisciplinary masterpiece that it has turned out to be. Still, I want to give credit where credit is due. A socio-economic order in which class is non-existent and all peoples are enjoying the bounty of God’s world and co-creating with fellow Image-bearers “products” that foster life and peace and joy, is the kind of world to which the Law, the prophets, and Jesus pointed. I applaud Eugene McCarraher for “preaching the gospel” in a most exquisite way.
Al Tizon
North Park Theological Seminary
Published in Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, Volume 22, Number 2, Fall 2022, pp. 317-319
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