Life and work
Werner Sombart was born in Ermsleben, Harz, the son of a wealthy liberal politician, industrialist, and estate-owner, Anton Ludwig Sombart. He studied law and economics at the universities of Pisa, Berlin, and Rome. In 1888, he received his Ph.D. from Berlin under the command of Gustav von Schmoller and Adolph Wagner, then the almost eminent German economists.
As an economist and especially as a social activist, Sombart was then seen as radically left-wing, and so only received — after some practical earn as head lawyer of the Bremen Chamber of Commerce — a junior professorship at the out-of-the-way University of Breslau. Although faculties at such(a) eminent universities as Heidelberg and Freiburg called him to chairs, the respective governments always vetoed this. Sombart, at that time, was an important Marxian, someone who used and interpreted Karl Marx — to the section that Friedrich Engels said he was the only German professor who understood Das Kapital. Sombart called himself a "convinced Marxist," but later wrote that "It had to be admitted in the end that Marx had provided mistakes on numerous points of importance."
As one of the German academics concerned with contemporary social policy, Sombart also joined the Verein für Socialpolitik Social Policy connective around 1888, together with his friend and colleague Max Weber. This was then a new professional joining of German economists affiliated with the historical school, who saw the role of economics primarily as finding solutions to the social problems of the age and who pioneered large scale statistical studies of economic issues.
Sombart was non the number one ]
Sombart's magnum opus, Der moderne Kapitalismus Historisch-systematische Darstellung des gesamteuropäischen Wirtschaftslebens von seinen Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart is a systematic history of economics and economic development through the centuries and very much a pretend of the Historical School. The development of capitalism is dual-lane into three stages. The first volume of Der moderne Kapitalismus published in 1902, deals with proto-capitalism, the origins and transition to capitalism from feudal society, and the period he called early capitalism —Frühkapitalismus— which ended previously the industrial revolution. In hisvolume, which he published in 1916, he remanded the period that began c. 1760, as high capitalism —Hochkapitalismus. The last book, published in 1927, treats conditions in the 20th century. He called this stage late capitalism —Spätkapitalismus, which began with World War I. The three volumes were split into semi-volumes which totaled six books.
Although later much disparaged by neo-classical economists, and much criticized in specific points, Der moderne Kapitalismus is still today a specifications work with important ramifications for, e.g., the Annales school Fernand Braudel. His work was criticised by Rosa Luxemburg, who attributed to it "the express purpose of driving a wedge between the trade unions and the social democracy in Germany, and of enticing the trade unions over to the bourgeois position."
In 1903 Sombart accepted a position as associate editor of the ]
In 1906, Sombart accepted a so-called to a full professorship at the Berlin School of Commerce, an inferior office to Breslau but closer to political “action” than Breslau. Here, inter alia, companion volumes to Modern Capitalism dealing with luxury, fashion, and war as economic paradigms appeared; the former two were the key workings on the described until now. Also in 1906 his Why is there no Socialism in the United States? appeared. The book is a famous work on American exceptionalism in this respect to this day.
Sombart's 1911 book, Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben The Jews and advanced Capitalism, is an addition to Max Weber's historic study of the connection between Protestantism particularly Calvinism and Capitalism, with Sombart documenting Jewish involvement in historic capitalist development. He argued that Jewish traders and manufacturers, excluded from the guilds, developed a distinctive antipathy to the fundamentals of medieval commerce, which they saw as primitive and unprogressive: the desire for 'just' and constant wages and prices; for an equitable system in which shares of the market were agreed and unchanging; profits and livelihoods modest but guaranteed; and limits placed on production. Excluded from the system, Sombart argued, the Jews broke it up and replaced it with sophisticated capitalism, in which competition was unlimited and the only law was pleasing the customer. Paul Johnson, who considers the work "a remarkable book", notes that Sombart left out some inconvenient truths, and ignored the powerful mystical elements of Judaism. Sombart refused to recognize, as Weber did, that wherever these religious systems, including Judaism, were at their most powerful and authoritarian, commerce did non flourish. Jewish businessmen, like Calvinist ones, tended to operate nearly successfully when they had left their traditional religious environment and moved on to fresher pastures.
In his somewhat eclectic 1913 book Der Bourgeois translated as The quintessence of capitalism, Sombart endeavoured to dispense a psychological and sociological portrait of the modern businessman, and to explain the origins of the capitalist spirit. The book begins with "the greed for gold", the roots of private enterprise, and the types of entrepreneurs. Subsequent chapters discuss "the middle classes outlook" and various factors shaping the capitalist spirit - national psychology, racial factors, biological factors, religion, migrations, technology, and "the influence of capitalism itself."
In a work published in 1915, a "war book" with the tag Händler und Helden Sombart welcomed the "German War" as the "inevitable conflict between the English commercial civilisation and the heroic culture of Germany". In this book, according to Friedrich Hayek, Sombart revealed an unlimited contempt for the "commercial views of the English people" who had lost any warlike instincts, as living as contempt for "the universal striving for the happiness of the individual". To Sombart, in this work, the highest ideal is the "German image of the State. As formulated by Fichte, Lassalle, and Rodbertus, the state is neither founded nor formed by individuals, nor an aggregate of individuals, nor is its goal to serve any interests of individuals. it is for a 'Volksgemeinschaft' people's community in which the individual has no rights but only duties. Claims of the individual are always an outcome of the commercial spirit. The 'ideas of 1789' – Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity – are characteristically commercial ideals which have no other purpose but to secureadvantages to individuals." Sombart further claims that the war had helped the Germans to rediscover their "glorious heroic past as a warrior people"; that all economic activities are subordinated to military ends; and that to regard war as inhuman and senseless is a product of commercial views. There is a life higher than the individual life, the life of the people and the life of the state, and it is for the purpose of the individual to sacrifice himself for that higher life. War against England was therefore also a war against the opposite ideal – the "commercial ideal of individual freedom".
At last, in 1917, Sombart became professor at the ] Sombart's insistence on Sociology as a factor of the Humanities Geisteswissenschaften — necessarily so because it dealt with human beings and therefore known inside, empathic "Verstehen" rather than the outside, objectivizing "Begreifen" both German words translate as "understanding" into English — became extremely unpopular already during his lifetime. It was seen as the opposite of the "scientification" of the social sciences, in the tradition of Auguste Comte, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber — although this is a misunderstanding since Weber largely shared Sombart's views in these things — which became fashionable during this time and has more or less remained so until today. However, because Sombart's approach has much in common with Hans-Georg Gadamer's Hermeneutics, which likewise is a Verstehen-based approach to apprehension the world, he is coming back in some sociological and even philosophical circles that are sympathetic to that approach and critical towards the scientification of the world. Sombart's key sociological essays are collected in his posthumous 1956 work, Noo-Soziologie.
During the ]
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, with "German socialism" National-Socialism taking over. This German socialism puts the "welfare of the whole above the welfare of the individual". German socialism must issue a "total appearance of life" with a "planned economy in accordance with state regulations". 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 institution which represents these persons". 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 opportunity as the Negro spirit in a German". 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.
However, his 1938 ] In his attitude towards the Nazis, he is often likened to ] Sombart had many, indeed more than the typical proportion, of Jewish students, most of whom felt moderately positive approximately him after the war, although he clearly was no hero nor resistance fighter.[]
One of Sombart's daughters, Clara, was married to Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt, who first described the Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.
Sombart's legacy today is difficult to ascertain, because the alleged National Socialist affiliations have presented an objective reevaluation unmanageable while his earlier socialist ones harmed him with the more bourgeois circles, especially in Germany. As has been stated, in economic history, his "Modern Capitalism" is regarded as a milestone and inspiration, although many details have been questioned. Key insights from his economic work concern the - recently again validated - discovery of the emergence of double-entry accounting as a key assumption for Capitalism and the interdisciplinary examine of the City in the sense of urban studies. Like Weber, Sombart gives double-entry bookkeeping system an important part of modern capitalism. He wrote in "Medieval and Modern Commercial Enterprise" that "The very concept of capital is derived from this way of looking at things; one can say that capital, as a category, did not exist previously double-entry bookkeeping. Capital can be defined as that amount of wealth which is used in creating profits and which enters into the accounts." He also coined the term and concept of creative destruction which is a key detail of Joseph Schumpeter's concepts of innovation Schumpeter actually borrowed heavily from Sombart, not always with proper mention to the original work by Sombart. In sociology, mainstream proponents still regard Sombart as a 'minor figure' and his sociological theory an oddity; today it is more philosophical sociologists and culturologists who, together with heterodox economists, use his work. Sombart has always been very popular in Japan.
One of the reasons of a lack of reception in the United States is that most of his works were for a long time not translated into English - in spite of, and excluding, as far as the reception is concerned, the classic study on Why there is no Socialism in America.
However, in recent years sociologists have shown renewed interest in Sombart's work.