Capitalism and the Jews (review)

In 1911, the German sociologist Werner Sombart published his notorious study Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben, translated into English as The Jews and Modern Capitalism (1913). Sombart’s book was conceptualized as a rejoinder to Max Weber’s study The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (first published in 1904/1905), in which he notably established a link between the spirit of capitalism and Protestantism. Sombart accepted Weber’s thesis of the religious sources of modern capitalism and even offered his book as a direct development of Weber’s study on the origins of modern capitalism. Yet, in contrast to Weber, Sombart claimed that everything Weber had ascribed to Protestantism was actually rooted in Judaism and more intensively practiced by the Jews. Further, Sombart identified the Jews themselves, as opposed to Jewish culture or religion, as the originators and drivers of modern capitalism, based on their alleged racial and physiological characteristics. Although Sombart’s book was more a rehash of the age-old perception of the special affinity of Jews to money than an original explanation for the origins of modern capitalism, it initiated vehement discussion. The reason for this was not only Sombart’s position as one of the most respected German sociologists of the early twentieth century, a rank which gave academic credibility to his ideas, but also the debate about capitalism itself, which in the period after 1900 was symptomatic for a sense that a deep-seated schism existed in the social development of the epoch. As a result, the question of the Jews and capitalism became highly politicized. After the Holocaust, it also became almost taboo, resulting in a marked decline in academic interest in the subject since World War II. In this sense, Capitalism and the Jews is a welcome and important study that contributes to the renewal of interest in a significant topic that has lacked reputable scholarly attention in recent decades.

It is interesting not only to call attention to some commonalities but also to fundamental differences between Muller’s and Sombart’s works, which in many ways could be read as a manifestation of the changing attitudes to capitalism and the Jews over the last century. Like Sombart, Muller too basically accepts the notion of Jewish economic distinctiveness and the special affinity of Jews to money. Although for the German sociologist, Jewish economic singularity served as a pretext to articulate his animus against modern capitalism, Muller appears to be more concerned with the fate of capitalism and the associated question of how it might affect the Jews. Informing his approach is not only the contention that “Jews are good at capitalism,” but also that “capitalism is good for the Jews.” It is difficult to quibble with such a sweeping statement. For example, Muller does not convey to us what the term “good” exactly means in this context. But as he himself admits in the introduction, the essays included in this book operate at a level of generalization with which most historians will feel uncomfortable.

The first chapter provides an illuminating discussion of the views of some prominent European thinkers on the association of Jews with money. Muller distinguishes between three major responses to this juxtaposition, which could be simplistically depicted as the good, the bad, and the indefinable. To the first category, belong thinkers like Montesquieu, and especially the sociologist Georg Simmel, who according to Muller neither downplayed or overstated the role of the Jews as capitalists, but developed a favorable conception of capitalism as a civilizing force promoting “individuality based on choice,” (50) facilitating more understanding and connections between people. Scholars like Karl Marx, and even more so Werner Sombart, are examples of the second type of response, amalgamating anticapitalism and antisemitism. Max Weber, who according to Muller simply ignored the Jews and was ambivalent about capitalism, is an example of the third type of a more undefined response. Interestingly, Muller does not discuss here Weber’s conception of pariah capitalism, which he clearly...