Although Mises radically underrated the intellectual merits of the Jewish sources, he was not far from the truth in thinking that are no direct connections to be drawn between Judaism and capitalism

Judaism, Capitalism, and Communism

by David Gordon

[Part 2 of "Judaism and Capitalism: Friends or Enemies?" The Lou Church Memorial Lecture in Religion and Economics, presented at the 2012 Austrian Scholars Conference (Clickhere for part 1)]

Let us turn then to another attempt to connect Judaism and capitalism, and this one the most significant of all, Werner Sombart’s The Jews and Modern Capitalism, which appeared in 1911. Sombart conforms to the pattern mentioned earlier that those who ascribe to the Jews primary responsibility to capitalism tend to be hostile to both Judaism and capitalism.

In Sombart’s case this is hardly surprising. Sombart began his academic career as a convinced Marxist. Though he veered to the right, he remained a socialist to the end, albeit of a peculiar kind. Like Marx, he stressed Jewish involvement in trade as the essence of capitalism: The Jews with their trader-ethic had succeeded in transforming the more static values of the Middle Ages. The broad outlines of this theory will already be familiar from our discussion of Marx’s essay; but Sombart developed the position with enormously greater learning in the Jewish sources and in Jewish history. Sombart himself says that Marx, in his essay, “looked deep into the Jewish soul”. After mentioning two other writers, he says, “What has been said about the Jewish spirit since these men (all Jews!) wrote is either a repetition of what they said or a distortion of the truth.” [1]

His favorable reference to Marx’s essay should be sufficient to suggest that Sombart was an unfriendly critic of Judaism, but Milton Friedman dissents. He writes, “Sombart’s book. . . has had in general a highly unfavorable reception. . .and, indeed, something of an aura of anti-Semitism has come to be attributed to it. . .there is nothing in the book itself to justify any charge of anti-Semitism though there certainly is in Sombart’s writing and behavior several decades later, indeed, if anything I interpret the book as philo-Semitic” [2] Friedman has I suggest been deceived by his own strong approval for the behavior and attitudes that Sombart depicts. Sombart was not praising the Jews, e.g., when he ascribed to them the trader’s mentality.

.................
Read more: mises.org