Werner Sombart: The English Are Infected with the Jewish Spirit

[Joe McCarthy]

I thought this might be worth a discussion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Sombart

In 1934 he published Deutscher Sozialismus where he claimed a "new spirit" was beginning to "rule mankind". The age of capitalism and proletarian socialism was over and with "German socialism" (National-Socialism) taking over. This German socialism puts the "welfare of the whole above the welfare of the individual".[2] German socialism must effect a "total ordering of life" with a "planned economy in accordance with state regulations".[3] The new legal system will confer on individuals "no rights but only duties" and that "the state should never evaluate individual persons as such, but only the group which represents these persons".[4] German socialism is accompanied by the Volksgeist (national spirit) which is not racial in the biological sense but metaphysical: "the German spirit in a Negro is quite as much within the realm of possibility as the Negro spirit in a German".[5] The antithesis of the German spirit is the Jewish spirit, which is not a matter of being born Jewish or believing in Judaism but is a capitalistic spirit. The English people possess the Jewish spirit and the "chief task" of the German people and National Socialism is to destroy the Jewish spirit.

[BritishLad]

Many English people didn't really care for/like the Jews actually

[Joe McCarthy]

Many English people didn't really care for/like the Jews actually

Sombart, who was originally a Marxist, was in the business of trying to reduce capitalism to Judaism essentially. There are a number of problems with that view, but it's standard Nazi boilerplate.

[BritishLad]

Aaahhhhh ok now I understand

[Angelcynn Beorn]

It fails the acid test that Capitalism was "invented" by a gentile, while Marxism and it's Socialist offspring, were invented by a Jew. It's surprising how many otherwsie clued up people don't know this.

[Joe McCarthy]

It fails the acid test that Capitalism was "invented" by a gentile, while Marxism and it's Socialist offspring, were invented by a Jew. It's surprising how many otherwsie clued up people don't know this.

Well, Sombart's argument, if you read his The Jews and Modern Capitalism, is that capitalist development was heavily Jewish and essentially began in Venice. His argument though is self-refuting, because though Jews were overrepresented in capitalistic pursuits, they constituted a very clear minority even by his calculations.