German Socialism as an Alternative to Marxism:

In the seventh article in our series on figures of the German Conservative Revolution Alexander Jacob examines the political thought of the “cultural pessimist” Oswald Spengler and the socialist writer Werner Sombart

I may briefly recall that Karl Marx (1818-1883) was born in an orthodox Jewish family in the Rhineland and studied law, philosophy and history at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin. Marx began his career as a political economist in Paris through his association with the German, Friedrich Engels. His earliest economic work was the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 which reflected his absorption of Hegelianism, French socialism and English economics. Expelled from France in 1845, Marx moved to Brussels, where he was brought into contact with the workers' movement, for which he drafted in 1848 the influential Communist Manifesto which contained a critique of capitalism and a call for revolutionary socialism. During the Revolutions of 1848, Marx was extradited from Brussels and the remainder of his years were spent mostly in London where he was financially supported by Engels, who had by now become an affluent industrialist. His major work produced in England was Das Kapital (1867) which remains the Bible of Communism among left-wing thinkers.

The complete rejection of philosophical discussion in Das Kapital crystallises the innate defect of the Jewish mind as much as Marx's exclusive focus on economic issues in his projects for the future society of man. Believing that capitalism was a transient stage in the evolution of society since it was based on the exploitation of labour by the capitalist minority which must sooner or later be swept aside by the masses, Marx outlined a coming anarchic utopia which would be entirely free of money, social classes and even state-government. It may be noted that Marx himself was a professed anti-Semite since he considered the Jews as predominantly capitalistic in spirit, but the social system that he propounded instead was no less significative of the Jewish mentality than that of the capitalists he attacked. The cultural limitations of Marx's materialistic view of life conditioned by what he called "the mode of production of the material means of life" were, therefore, most clearly exposed by the more genuinely philosophical German sociologists such as Sombart and Spengler.

Werner Sombart (1863-1941), the economist and social philosopher is noted today for his several pioneering works on the capitalistic ethos. Although Sombart began his sociological career as a socialist in the Marxist vein, he gradually dissociated himself from the economic-orientation of Marx's social theory in favour of a more voluntarist understanding of the springs of social evolution which supported the very patriarchal and aristocratic model of society which Marx had sought to destroy. In his Die deutsche Volkswirtschaft im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (1903), Sombart turned his back on the socialist glorification of progress which he saw as destructive of the human spirit and revived the mediaeval ideal of the guild community which involved, as Mitzman summarises it, "the full absorption1 and development of the personality of the producer in his work; limited goals; and the shaping of the productive units on the model of the family community"1 . The replacement of this original organic society by the artificial "Gesellschaft", to use T”nnies' terminology, was consolidated by the interference of the Jew in Germanic society since the Jew is marked by abstract thought which is "synonymous with indifference to all qualitative values, with the inability to appreciate the concrete, individual, personal, living".2 The symbolical expression of the Jewish capacity for abstraction is money which "dissolves all use-values into their quantitative equivalents".3 The proletariat, which is the typical social product of capitalism, is the element which suffers most in the replacement of the patriarchal social ethos by the commercial, for "every community of interest is dissolved, just as every community of labour" and "bare payment is the only bond which ties the contracting parties together".4 The traditional comfort of religion too has been destroyed by capitalism which typically bolstered the Liberal intellectual movement of the Enlightenment. A further crucial difference between Sombarts's developing German Socialism and Marxism is his distinction of the capitalist into the entrepreneur and the trader in such a way that, whereas Marx attempted to overcome the entrepreneur as a historically obsolete figure, Sombart championed the creative and organisational virtue of the entrepreneurial spirit against the merely rationalising and abstracting characteristics of the trader.5 The entrepreneur thus becomes in Sombart's view the economic representative of the typical Faustian spirit of the German hero while the calculating trader is increasingly identified with the foreigner, particularly the Jews and the English.

In his war-time book, Händler und Helden (Munich, 1915), Sombart discusses the sociological significance of the war between the English and the Germans in terms of the radical difference between the "trader spirit" which aims at achieving mere "happiness" through the negative virtues of "temperance, contentedness, industry, sincerity, moderation ---, humility, patience and the like" which will facilitate a "peaceful concourse of traders", and the "heroic spirit" which aims at fulfilling the mission of life as a task of the higher self-realisation of humanity through the positive virtues of "the will to sacrifice, loyalty, inoffensiveness, reverence, valour, piety, obedience, goodness" and the "military virtues", since "all heroism was first fully developed in war and through war".6 War for the English was a chiefly commercial enterprise whereas for the German it was a defence of his soul from the deadening influence of this same commercial spirit.

However, already in his major works of 1911-1913, on Die Jüden und das Wirtschaftsleben (1911) and on the bourgeois spirit, Der Bourgeois, 1913, Sombart had shown that the modern system of commercial capitalism was due mainly not to English Protestantism, as Max Weber had proclaimed in his Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (1904-5), but to Judaism. In fact, Weber himself was forced, under the stimulus of Sombart's work, to distinguish between Protestant capitalism and the "pariah capitalism" of the Jews, a distinction which corresponds to Sombart's own historical division of the development of capitalism into early and high capitalism. While Catholicism, and particularly Thomism, had been partially influential in the development of the commercial spirit in its rationalistic, legalistic and essentially this-worldly philosophy, Sombart denied that Protestantism was synonymous with capitalism since, on the contrary, Lutheranism had at least encouraged a deepening of religious feeling. Even other forms of Protestantism were marked by a generally anti-capitalistic spirit of niggardliness and at most took over capitalistic forms from the existing economic life of the Catholics. The real source of the development of the high capitalistic stage of society is however, according to Sombart, the Jewish mind, which first introduced the chief characteristics of modern capitalism, namely the unrestricted play of the profit motive through free-trade, usurious dealings2 and ruthless business practices, especially with regard to non-Jews.

The identification of cheating in commercial transactions and exploitation of other peoples as the chief causes of the financial power of Jewry is most fully discussed by Sombart in Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben (Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1911). The root of Jewish economics is located by Sombart in the hereditary religion itself which

“in all its reasonings appeals to us as a creation of the intellect, a thing of thought and purpose projected into the world of organisms, mechanically and artfully wrought, destined to destroy and to conquer Nature's realm and to reign itself in her stead. Just so does Capitalism appear on the scene; like the Jewish religion, an alien element in the midst of the natural, created world; like it too something schemed and planned in the midst of teeming life.”7

“modern capitalism is the child of money-lending --- In money-lending all conception of quality vanishes and only the quantitative aspect matters --- In money-lending economic activity as such has no meaning; it is no longer a question of exercising body or mind; it is all a question of success. Success, therefore, is the only thing that has a meaning. In money-lending the possibility is for the first time illustrated that you can earn without sweating; that you may get others to work for you without recourse to force.8

“[The Jew] paid no attention to the strict delimitation of one calling or of one handicraft from another, so universally insisted on by law and custom. Again and again we hear the cry that Jews did not content themselves with one kind of activity; they did whatever they could, and so disturbed the order of things which the guild system wished to see maintained.”9

“intercourse with strangers was bereft of all considerations, and commercial morality (if I may put it so) became elastic.”10

“Before capitalism could develop, the natural man had to be changed out of all recognition, and a rationalistically minded mechanism introduced in his stead. There had to be a transvaluation of all economic values.”11

“That Lord Beaconsfield was a Conservative was due to some accident or other, or some political conjuncture; but Stein and Bismarck and Carlyle were Conservatives because they could not help it; it was in their blood.”12

“every status where the nexus is a personal one. The Jew's whole being is opposed to all that is usually understood by chivalry, to all sentimentality, knight-errantry, feudalism, patriarchalism. Nor does he comprehend a social order based on relationships such as these. `Estates of the realm' and craft organisations are a loathing to him. Politically he is an individualist --- He is the born representative of the `liberal' view of life in which there are no living men and women of flesh and blood with distinct personalities, but only citizens with rights and duties.”13

“whatever can be neatly set down on paper and ordered aright by the aid of the intellect must of necessity be capable of proper settlement in actual life.”14

Unfortunately, this "fatal belief in progress which --- ruled the ideal world of the proletarian Socialism even more than the world of liberalism"15 is the chief cause of the inexorable decay of genuine human culture, for, as he says, "to perpetually renew, hinders all culture --- Only when in the course of history the traditions of belief, of morals, of education, and of organisation are dominant is it possible for a culture to unfold itself. For, in accordance with its very nature, culture is old, rooted, indigenous".16 The basis of all culture can be only the nation and not the state as such, for the nation is "the political association in its endeavour to attain an end --- The nation exists not because it lives in the consciousness of the individuals, but it exists as an idea in the realm of the spirit; it is `spiritual individuality".17 The people that constitute a nation are indeed an organism like the individual and possess the same origin, same historical destiny, and the same spiritual culture. It is on this cultural basis that one ought to distinguish the Jews as an alien nation. The Jews should be denied equal rights in holding leading and responsible positions, regardless of their spirit and character. He points with approval to the pre-Wilhelminian period when

"the military corps and nearly the entire internal and judicial administration, with approved exceptions, were closed against the Jews. Had this practice been retained, and had the Jews been assigned to other important fields, such as the universities, law and other activities, the German fatherland and, by no means least, the Jews themselves, would have been spared heavy afflictions".18

The economic policy of the modern states must also be one directed in a corporative manner based on a system of estates, which will be free of the potential for exploitation in the Jewish system,

“self-interests are to be overcome and articulated in the state as a whole; nor, in such an order, does the individual find his place according to his own estimate, but receives the place assigned to him. That means the recognition of the primacy of politics. In other words, an order according to estates is not reconcilable with the principle of free enterprise and free competition. In a community in which capitalistic economy still rules, an estate system is a contradiction. Not until the state rests fundamentally upon institutions, that is, upon a legal order which imposes duties, can an estate-system fulfil its tasks.”20

Sombart's German Socialism is indeed very indistinguishable from that of the Neo-conservatives of the Weimar Republic, Oswald Spengler, Moeller van den Bruck, or Edgar Julius Jung.21 This should only confirm the much neglected fact that what the anti-democratic and anti-liberal Germans were fundamentally fighting for in the Weimar Republic was the European ethos as opposed to the Jewish, and that German Socialism (as distinct from and irreconcilable with Marxist Socialism) is as oriented to the development of true moral culture and as hierarchically and neo-mediaevally organised as German Conservatism.22 As representative of the neo-conservative position in the Weimar Republic we may consider here the political views of Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) whose social ideal is indeed termed `Prussian Socialism' in his essay, Preussentum und Sozialismus (1919), which was a sketch of the main themes of the second part of his two-volume magnum opus, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (1918 and 1922). The burden of Spengler's argument in this essay is the difference between the so-called Marxist socialism which is based on alien, English and Jewish, understandings of society and the genuine socialism of the Prussian state. The socialism of the English is demonstrated to be a Viking-like individualism which has encouraged the colonial rapacity of the British Empire and the mercantile ruthlessness of its leaders. The Norman conquest of England had put an end to the Anglo-Saxon way of life and introduced the `piracy principle' whereby "the barons exploited the land apportioned to them, and were in turn exploited by the duke".23 The modern English and American trade companies are enchained to the same motives of profiteering:

“Their aim is not to work steadily to raise the entire nation's standard of living, it is rather to produce private fortunes by the use of private capital, to overcome private competition, and to exploit the public through the use of advertising, price wars, control of the ratio of supply and demand.”24

The Marxist doctrine, being a product of the Jewish mind, which is characterised by `resentment', is based on an envy of those who have wealth and privileges without work, and so it advocates revolt against those who possess these advantages. It is thus essentially a negative variant of the English ethos. It is not surprising, therefore, that the worker in the Marxist doctrine is encouraged to amass his own profits through private business, so that, as Spengler puts it, "Marxism is", indeed, "the capitalism of the working class". The Marxist system is indeed the "final chapter of a philosophy with roots in the English Revolution, whose biblical moods have remained dominant in English thought".25 In fact, as he goes on to say, "a biblical interpretation of questionable business dealings can ease the conscience and greatly increase ambition and initiative".26 While the industrialists engage in commerce with `money' as a commodity, the workers do the same with `work'. In the Prussian state, on the other hand, work is not a commodity but a "duty towards the common interest, and there is no gradation - this is Prussian style democratisation - of ethical values among the various kinds of work."

The Marxian solution to boundless private property is also a negative one: "expropriation of the expropriators, robbery of the robbers".27 This is based on the "English" view of capital wherein "the billionaire demands absolute freedom to arrange world affairs by his private decisions, with no other ethical standard in mind than success. He beats down his opponents with credit and speculation as his weapons." On the other hand, the Prussian sees property not as private booty but as part of a common weal, "not as a means of expression of personal power but as goods placed in trust, for the administration of which he, as a property owner, is responsible to the state". Prussian socialism is thus essentially

“not concerned with nominal property, but rather with techniques of administration --- The Old Prussian method was to legislate the formal structure of the total productive potential while guarding carefully the right to property and inheritance, and to allow so much freedom to personal talent, energy, initiative, and intellect as one might allow a skilled chess 23 player who had mastered all the rules of the game. This is largely how it was done with the old cartels and syndicates, and there is no reason why it could not be systematically extended to work habits, work evaluation, profit distribution, and the internal relationship between planners and executive personnel. Socialisation means the slow, decades-long transformation of the worker into an economic civil-servant, of the employer into a responsible administrative official with extensive powers of authority, and of property into a kind of old-style hereditary fief to which a certain number of rights and privileges are attached.28

“The Teutonic knights that settled and colonised the eastern borderlands of Germany in the Middle Ages had a genuine feeling for the authority of the state in economic matters, and later Prussians have inherited that feeling. The individual is informed of his economic obligations by Destiny, by God, by the state, or by his own talent --- Rights and privileges of producing and consuming goods are equally distributed. The aim is not ever greater wealth of the individual or for every individual, but rather the flourishing of the totality.”29

“The Prussian style of living --- has produced a profound rank-consciousness, a feeling of unity based on an ethos of work, not of leisure. It unites the members of each professional group - military, civil service, and labour - by infusing them with a pride of vocation, and dedicates them to activity that benefits all others, the totality, the state.”30

“Let us envision a unified nation in which every one is assigned his place according to his socialistic rank, his talent for voluntary self-discipline based on inner conviction, his organisational abilities, his work potential, consciousness, and energy, his intelligent willingness to serve the common cause. Let us plan for general work conscription, resulting in occupational guilds that will administrate and at the same time be guided by an administrative council, and not by a parliament.”32

the institutions, the sense of tact and cautious observance of the amenities, are dying out with the old-style people of good breeding --- The relationship between party leaders and party, between party and masses, will be tougher, more transparent, and more brazen. That is the beginning of Caesarism.33

"only possible as the victory of the idea of a single race over all the others, and not as the mixture of all separate opinions into one colourless mass".37

“that life is dominated not by a contrast of rich and poor but by rank as determined by achievement and ability. That is our kind of freedom: freedom from the economic capriciousness of the individual.” 38

("the demagogue lives with the masses as one of themselves; the born ruler can use them, but he despises them")39

We will have noticed then that the German socialism of the two thinkers we have considered is essentially a moral Idea based on the strong-willed character of the Germanic race. Both thinkers, moreover, are united in their contempt of the Jew whose chief modern political representative, Marx, is responsible for the perversion of the German feeling for social justice based on mutual co-operation into an unnatural warfare between the different classes of the same nation, for the ultimate benefit of an international organisation. Sombart's anti-Semitism is more exclusively economic and, for that reason, considers institutional reorganisation as sufficient for the elimination of the Jewish economic influence on society. Spengler's recognition of the irreconciliability of the Jewish ethos with the German on a spiritual level at the same time as he rejects racialism of the blood is a contradiction which leads him to believe that once the Europeans and Americans have achieved a certain independent mastery of the new urban civilisation of the modern age the Jewish financial expertise will become superfluous and the Jews fade away as a force to reckon with:

To-day this Magian nation, with its ghetto and its religion, itself is in danger of disappearing - not because the metaphysics of the two Cultures come closer to one another (for that is impossible), but because the intellectualised upper stratum of each side is ceasing to be metaphysical at all --- The lead that this nation has enjoyed from its long habituation to thinking in business terms becomes ever less and less (vis-a-vis the American, it has already almost gone), and with the loss of it will go the last potent means of keeping up a Consensus that has fallen regionally into parts. 42

[Note: footnotes not included in online version.]

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