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Old August 23rd, 2011 #1
Karl Radl
The Epitome of Evil
 
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: The Unseen University of New York
Posts: 3,130
Default Of Jewish Capital

Of Jewish Capital


Capitalism and Communism are often held to be two very different sides of the same coin and to be fair both are traditionally associated with jews by those; like myself, who are critical of jewry. I find it of particular notice that in a recent series of essays; collected in book form, we find an attempt to explain the jewishness of both these phenomena within the intellectual framework of philo-Semitism. Jerry Muller’s ‘Capitalism and the Jews’; (1) the work to which I allude, is rare precisely because it correctly maintains that there is a need to explain the phenomenal jewish involvement in both capitalism and anti-capitalism as separate but interlinked intellectual movements.

Muller to his great credit does not fall into the trap that many other scholars have either blundered into or deliberately jumped in of associating jews with only one of these intellectual movements and attempting to minimise or disregard jewish involvement in the other as has been noted; somewhat too kindly I think, by Erich Haberer. (2)

Haberer argued; and Muller has followed, that one must concede that the jewishness of the jews was a factor in their involvement in radical anti-capitalist (and by extension capitalist) movements rather than something incidental to it (3) as has been argued since time immemorial by philo-Semites and jews. (4) To argue that the jewishness was something essential rather than incidental one merely needs to note that jewish involvement in both capitalism and anti-capitalism has crossed intellectual divides in jewry with religious jews endorsing both in varying degrees at different times as have poor and rich jews a-like. (5)

This would and could not have been the case had jewishness been incidental to the cause of those jews joining either the capitalist or anti-capitalist political movements precisely because had it been incidental then the boundaries between the jewish groups should have been reasonably clean cut as those who were ‘underprivileged’ would have joined anti-capitalism, while those who were ‘privileged’ would have joined capitalism.

Muller understands and notes this arguing that the split is not so much in the nature of capitalism but in the nature of jewry. Muller argues that capitalism is a ‘de-racialising’/egalitarian force that through the dynamics of the market forces businesses to employ anyone and everyone who is capable to do a specific task at the appropriate standard at the lowest possible cost. Indeed Muller seems to be a believer that man is a product of his environment not his nature, which we can see as a weakness as Muller does not recognise; implicitly or explicitly, that the jew has been able to sell his historic high level of literacy and legalistic intellect in order to assist businesses where-as a Mexican or a negro has much less to offer as a general rule of thumb so accordingly have had a more difficult time to achieve ‘emancipation’ as the capitalist incentive would; in Muller’s logic, be less.

The time that such ‘emancipation’ would become an incentive for businesses to support it is when the market is too cut-throat and laissez-faire; such as in the current globalised economy, and requires the labour power that it is to exploit to work at an absolute minimum wage. The economic calculation is fairly simple in that if you can reduce the (always expensive) cost of labour then you make more profit and if that means the quality of the product or service is decreased then you will be able to take that economic risk if the combined probability and cost of it occurring is less than the profit that you can make (following the idea of the ‘Rational Economic Man’).

Firms; of course, are not perfect and make mistakes as well as take increasing risks with their capital often leading to things to economic depressions where the economy contracts in a form of cautious opposite to the previous bullish attitude. In essence one could type-cast it as a classic scenario of Janisian caution and risky shift if one were feeling bold with the determining factors being the confidence of the investors in their investments and willingness to invest their funds which in turn would be largely determined by the biological origin of the investors.

So if the investor was a jew: they would be inclined towards a high level of long-term risk as they tend to look; as a rule, for the best possible return as opposed to the best possible safest return. A Negro investor on the other hand would tend towards a high level of short-term risk as they tend to think in terms of the maximum possible return tomorrow as opposed to the maximum possible return in the future as the jews do.

My criticism of Muller’s implicit denial of biology here is actually referenced by proxy by Muller when he refers to jewish economist Werner Sombart and Theodor Fritsch’s synthesizing of his argument, which Muller (who I dare say probably hasn’t read the work of Fritsch’s to which he refers) has the unfortunate presumption to refer to in negative terms. (6)

I should also note in passing that Muller gets the title of Fritsch’s 1913 work wrong and claims it was ‘Die Juden im Handel und Das Geheimnis ihrer Erfolgen’ (‘The Jews in Commerce and the Secret of their Success’) when he should be aware that it was in fact ‘Das Rätsel des jüdischen Erfolges’ (‘The Riddle of Jewish Success’) to which he is referring. I will note as a further aside that Wikipedia has also got this horribly wrong and asserts that the book in question was published under the pseudonym F. Roderich-Stoltheim only in the 1927 English translation, (7) which it was not but rather appeared in the original German with this pseudonym of Fritsch’s as the listed author. I am somewhat puzzled at Muller here as it is a silly error for him to make in an otherwise excellent book although the reason seems to be that he is note familiar with Fritsch’s actual work and is relying on a biographer of Sombart’s for accurate information. (8)

However for all of Muller’s intellectual rigour as a historian of ideas he does not convince anyone with his ‘criticism’ of Sombart’s racial interpretation of economics, Weber’s ‘protestant work ethic’, Simmel’s (who was also jewish economist and socialist) economic determinism or his implicit argument that there is a peculiar jewish ‘genius’ at work. This leads him to some fairly far out there (and ignorant) assertions that for example Marx was ‘not a jew’. (9) As according to Muller to accept such ‘racist characterisations’ is to agree with critics of the jews and therefore make jews open to criticism and we can’t have that can we?

One has to laugh at Muller’s rather absurd reasoning here. However to show its absolute folly we can point out that every biographer of Marx’s has noted Marx’s jewish origin and have nearly always argued that it; in essence, made Marx the thinker he was by making him both highly intellectual and outsider (as Muller’s own logic would suggest). (10) This later attitude of Muller’s; perhaps explicable by the fact that these are separate essays collected after the fact in a book, is direct contradiction to his earlier attitude that we must identify and understand jewishness as part and/or the whole of the cause of jewish involvement in both capitalism and anti-capitalism. (11)

Muller cannot take jewishness into account as a factor, but then change jewry’s own definition of jewishness to being the Christian definition (i.e. religious confession rather than family lineage) as that is putting words in Judaism’s mouth. Muller would do well to pick up a decent work on Judaism and look up the issue of ‘who is a jew’ in halakhah where he would find; I suspect to both his surprise and alarm, that Judaism defines ‘who is a jew’ in fairly strict biological; not simply confessional, terms.

Muller does however correctly point out that Marx; if contextually understood, was not being anti-Semitic (as is frequently and incorrectly alleged) in his ‘Zur Judenfrage’ (12), but rather was using a familiar and commonly understood stereotype that he himself knew to be generally true to make himself understood. As Muller points out the jew as usurer has been a common and not wholly untrue characterisation of the jewish ‘contribution’; as Cecil Roth would have it, ‘to civilisation’ and when ‘Die Ewige Jude’ called the jews an economic parasite it was not without factual foundation. (13)
Muller; of course, would reject such parallels but what conclusion may we reasonably draw from the data (14) he has echoed from other sources about the domination of the jew in numerous walks of life as well as their preponderance in the higher echelons of intellectual movements (two of which he is studying)?

Muller would have it that it merely reflects a cultural paradigm and various ‘pressures’, but that is just a mealy-mouthed and fairly standard academic excuse for telling us that the ‘truth is anti-Semitic’ so therefore a load of academic verbiage is required to cover over the inconvenient reality of what the historical record suggests.

All in all; in spite of its errors of fact and sometimes absurd reasoning, ‘Capitalism and the Jews’ is an excellent intellectual crib for anti-Semites looking for respected academic work to buttress existing arguments against the jews. Muller has pulled together quite a lot of data from different areas to create his theory, but unfortunately the theory is not on enduring interest however the compiled data and examples certainly are.

References


(1) Jerry Z. Muller, 2010, ‘Capitalism and the Jews’, 1st Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton.
(2) Erich Haberer, 2004, ‘Jews and Revolution in Nineteenth Century Russia’, 2nd Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, pp. xii-xiii
(3) Ibid, p. xiii
(4) A good example of this is Benjamin Pinkus, 2008, ‘The Soviet Government and the Jews 1948-1967: A Documented Study’, 2nd Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, pp. 11-22; Benjamin Pinkus, 1988, ‘The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority’, 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, pp. 76-81
(5) Andrew R. Heinze, 1990, ‘Adapting to Abundance: Jewish Immigration, Mass Consumption and the Search for American Identity’, 1st Edition, Columbia University Press: New York, p. 17
(6) Muller, Op. Cit., p. 60
(7)
Theodor_Fritsch Theodor_Fritsch
[Last Accessed: 23/08/2011]
(8) Muller, Op. Cit., p. 234, n. 62
(9) Ibid, p. 137
(10) For example Isaiah Berlin, 1978, ‘Karl Marx: His Life and Environment’, 4th Edition, Oxford University Press: New York, pp. 18-25; David McLellan, 1980, ‘The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx’, 3rd Edition, Papermac: London, pp. 142-143
(11) Muller, Op. Cit. pp. 84-95
(12) Ibid., pp. 35-45
(13) Ibid., pp. 18-20; 25-26
(14) I will post a selection of this as a separate entry on Semitic Controversies.

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This was originally published at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...h-capital.html
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