The Enchantments of Mammon

Reviewed by: The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity by Eugene McCarraher Alvin Finkel Eugene McCarraher, The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2019) I did not expect to enjoy this ridiculously lengthy (800 pages) tome which opens its critique of capitalism with an unapologetic theism that I found tedious. McCarraher writes that he sees the earth as "a sacramental place, mediating the presence and power of God, revelatory of the superabundant love of divinity." (11) I have little interest in religion and less in McCarraher's exploration of the ways in which many people seek not just a relationship with a God figure but "enchantment," that is constant evidence of God's presence and guiding hand in their lives. In the end, while my own materialist thinking remained intact, I was won over to McCarraher's view that capitalism and Christianity have become so entwined that it is not unfair to say that capitalism has become a religion. This is 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 [End Page 205] of God's plan for and involvement in the lives of the divinity's alleged favourite creation. Relying on a vastness of sources, this book demonstrates, at least in idealist or discourse terms, better than anything I've read, the history of the selling of capitalist ideas and values over a number of centuries to those seeking to merge their lives into what they came to believe as God's plan for them. While its focus is very heavily on the United States, much of what is argued here is applicable across much of the world. The anti-capitalist values that McCarraher espouses – community, equality, a sharing of labour and its products – are common to those of many humanist Marxists and Marx himself in works such as Grundrisse. Still, McCarraher is determined, though often quoting Marx favourably, to dismiss Marx's materialism and his opposition to religion as just another form of "the enchantments of Mammon," the cult of progress and the belief in humans' mastery over nature rather than oneness with the forces in the natural world that McCarraher favours. McCarraher examines the writings of hundreds of political theorists and literary figures, both apologists and critics, who have dealt with questions of what fundamental values can be found in capitalist societies and how they are sacralized so that the pursuit of material advantage over others becomes highly praised and emulated. Some of his arguments are similar to those of Max Weber who regarded the Protestant ethic as the basis for capitalism's hegemonic successes. Those who could achieve monetary successes became in their own eyes and those of other believers likely members of "the elect" whom God had predestined to become residents of a heaven that had limited space. But Weber, like others, viewed the development of capitalism as a force that replaced notions of "enchantment," a divinity's presence in our daily lives and in all that we experience and see, with stifling rationality. Capitalism became the substitute for religion and the wealthy became the authors of their own fortune. For McCarraher, that's simply not the case. And so, for example, for the Puritans, God's hand was present in the design of the market, with riches being "promissory notes of grace" and profits "bills of credit from the transcendent realm of plenitude." (122–3) Capitalism viewed positively as enchantment can be found in the writings of such American literary greats as Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson, once a Unitarian minister who had become skeptical about Christianity, saw around him and embraced and encouraged a moral universe in which a competitive economy was a sacramental economy where the accumulation of riches involved a form of ecstasy that would allow humans to unite with the spirits. He encouraged each individual to do his best (the assumption of most of these theorists that God was only speaking to guys seemed rather universal) to enrich himself and thereby to become a virtual god

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