Sacred Economics: Money, Gift and Society in the Age of Transition

Expanded and updated, Charles Eisenstein’s classic treatise on capitalism, currency, and the gift economy.

This revised version of Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, and includes new chapters on up-to-date topics like cryptocurrencies and emerging research that has come out since the book’s original publication in 2011. Author Charles Eisenstein reveals how late-stage capitalism has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity; destroyed community; and necessitated endless growth at the cost of social and environmental devastation. Today, these trends have reached their extreme-but in the wake of their collapse, we may find great opportunities to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being.

Sacred Economics, Revised revisits the last ten years, showing how our money system has already begun a profound transformation-and explores the ways that our economy must continue to shift to support these changes. A broadly integrated synthesis of theory, policy, and practice, Sacred Economics, Revised explores avant-garde concepts of the New Economics, including negative-interest currencies, local currencies, gift economies, cryptocurrencies, and the restoration of the commons. Eisenstein also considers the personal dimensions of this transition, speaking to those concerned with right livelihood and how to live according to their ideals in a world seemingly ruled by money. Tapping into a rich lineage of conventional and unconventional economic thought, Sacred Economics, Revised presents a vision that is original yet commonsense, radical yet gentle, and increasingly relevant as the crises of our civilization deepen.