Mammon and the subversion of values

This chapter uses Platonist theological categories to analyse the pursuit of financial gain as an aim of high merit in its own right. This pursuit is a powerful governing principle within global capitalism and its consumer societies. This governing principle is ’Mammon’ and it often functions as a unifying centre of common worship in the prevailing global economic order. The manner in which Mammon subverts real value, real people, real immanence and real transcendence are key features of how it operates. The argument of this chapter is that abstract numerical fictions and merely manipulative instrumental power are intrinsic to Mammon; here shadows of reality are taken as sociologically and materially real. This chapter argues that the metaphysical and doxological assumptions of modernity need to be questioned if the lifeworld that revolves around Mammon is to be critiqued. In this context, Platonist theology has something significant to offer as a first-order subversion of the ’reality’ of Mammon and hence of the ’necessities’ of the prevailing norms of the global economic order.