Sombart and the Jews

Abstract

This essay has the purpose of collecting and exposing in synthetic form the main issues which Sombart treats in his book Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben, 1911. Sombart defends the view that the Jews have founded modern capitalism, inventing financial practices (such as credit instruments and security
 interests), thus easing the movement of money and investments (financial intermediation). In this they have been supported by texts (the Bible and its interpretative commentaries) and customary practices between people belonging to Jewish communities and strangers. The resulting form of capitalism is of
 a financial and commercial type, which Weber distinguishes from and opposes to the ‘modern’ form of capitalism, based on industry and rational production of goods, and determined by the typical character of Protestant ethics. The juxtaposition between Sombart and Weber sees the former arguing for a historical and conceptual articulation of capitalism that is more complex and articulated than the one posited by the latter. Weber believes that the ‘bloc’ formed by Jews, strangers and heretics (as opposed
 to Catholicism, that is, the Protestants) has founded capitalism in its original version, the Jewish form of capitalism, later supported by the English translation of the Bible, urged and authorized by James I, whose influence has powerfully affected the ideological construction of a ‘historic’ object.