WEBVTT NOTE Judaism and Capitalism 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.100 Well, welcome to the Lew Church, the annual Lew Church Memorial Lecture in Religion and 2 00:00:06.100 --> 00:00:07.100 Economics. 3 00:00:07.100 --> 00:00:11.880 We're pleased to have this lecture every year as a result of a generous gift from the 4 00:00:11.880 --> 00:00:16.980 Lew Church Memorial Foundation, Dr. Robert Hemholt, Chairman. 5 00:00:16.980 --> 00:00:20.780 Lew Church was a Florida businessman and a champion of liberty. 6 00:00:20.780 --> 00:00:25.220 He started out as a swimming pool cleaner, eventually built a great business in swimming 7 00:00:25.220 --> 00:00:41.220 He was a dedicated libertarian all his life, and he understood that government was a threat not only to entrepreneurship, to prosperity, and to freedom, but to everything that was good. 8 00:00:41.220 --> 00:00:47.220 Today the lecturer, the Lew Church lecturer, is Dr. David Gordon. 9 00:00:47.220 --> 00:01:02.220 David is an historian, a philosopher, really is an economist too. He got his PhD at UCLA in intellectual history. He's the editor of the Mises Review, I might say one of the most feared book reviewers in America. 10 00:01:02.220 --> 00:01:12.220 He's the author or the editor of eight books. He's a senior fellow at the Mises Institute. 11 00:01:12.220 --> 00:01:17.300 Institute, and I'm just going to tell one story related to David. After Murray Rothbard's 12 00:01:17.300 --> 00:01:23.140 death, Joey asked me to go through all his papers and other belongings in Las Vegas and 13 00:01:23.140 --> 00:01:27.780 ship back what was necessary to New York. And in going through the letters, I came upon 14 00:01:27.780 --> 00:01:34.100 one that Murray had written in 1979, and he was saying he'd been at a conference, but 15 00:01:34.100 --> 00:01:38.400 by far the most exciting thing that happened to him was to meet this young man, David Gordon. 16 00:01:38.400 --> 00:01:44.680 He said, David is the closest thing to a universal genius that I've ever encountered. 17 00:01:44.680 --> 00:01:48.320 And when Murray Rothbard says that about you, that's something quite extraordinary because 18 00:01:48.320 --> 00:01:51.880 all of us have gotten to know David, know Murray was not exaggerating. 19 00:01:51.880 --> 00:01:57.880 So today, it's great to have David talk about Judaism and capitalism in the Lew Church Memorial 20 00:01:57.880 --> 00:01:58.880 Lecture. 21 00:01:58.880 --> 00:02:01.880 Dr. Gordon. 22 00:02:01.880 --> 00:02:14.560 Ladies and gentlemen, it's a great honor to be asked to give the Lew Church Lecture. 23 00:02:14.560 --> 00:02:22.120 I cannot help thinking, though, that as I'm talking about Judaism and capitalism, it might 24 00:02:22.120 --> 00:02:29.680 have been more appropriate to call it this year the Lew Synagogue Lecture. 25 00:02:29.680 --> 00:02:37.120 The subject Judaism and Capitalism needs to be addressed in two related but separate parts. 26 00:02:37.120 --> 00:02:44.500 In one of these, the question up for discussion is, what is the relation between Judaism taken 27 00:02:44.500 --> 00:02:48.840 as a body of religious doctrine and capitalism? 28 00:02:48.840 --> 00:02:54.660 In the other, the issue that confronts us is, what is the relation between Jews taken 29 00:02:54.660 --> 00:02:58.360 as a particular ethnic group and capitalism? 30 00:02:58.360 --> 00:03:09.000 Obviously, the two questions are related. One way of identifying at least some Jews is as those who practice the Jewish religion. 31 00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:16.360 Certainly, many of those ethnically Jewish are estranged from their ancestral faith. 32 00:03:16.360 --> 00:03:23.300 Nevertheless, that there exists a connection between the two parts of our topic is clear. 33 00:03:23.300 --> 00:03:28.980 I propose to consider both of these parts in the remarks that follow. 34 00:03:28.980 --> 00:03:36.900 I shall take the capitalism in our title as not requiring an extended venture in definition 35 00:03:36.900 --> 00:03:38.820 or analysis. 36 00:03:38.820 --> 00:03:42.740 By it I intend nothing controversial. 37 00:03:42.740 --> 00:03:48.620 I mean the economic system in place over much of the world since the Industrial Revolution 38 00:03:48.620 --> 00:03:55.420 characterized for the most part by private ownership of the means of production. 39 00:03:55.420 --> 00:04:02.380 I should note that contemporary left libertarians often use capitalism to designate a partnership 40 00:04:02.380 --> 00:04:11.380 between government and big business in which they contrast with a truly free market. 41 00:04:11.380 --> 00:04:18.580 That is not the usage of capitalism that I have in mind here. 42 00:04:18.580 --> 00:04:25.020 The theories that endeavored to connect Judaism and capitalism often, though not invariably, 43 00:04:25.020 --> 00:04:30.100 spring from distaste for one or both of the paired terms. 44 00:04:30.100 --> 00:04:38.400 This was notoriously the case in Karl Marx's famous essay on the Jewish question written 45 00:04:38.400 --> 00:04:41.220 in 1844. 46 00:04:41.220 --> 00:04:49.140 In this early work, Marx said that capitalism was Jewish in that both, both capitalism and 47 00:04:49.140 --> 00:04:52.080 Judaism were egoistic. 48 00:04:52.080 --> 00:04:58.780 In his important book, Capitalism and the Jews, Jerry Muller says, I quote, were Jews 49 00:04:58.780 --> 00:05:01.440 egoistic as Bauer had charged? 50 00:05:01.440 --> 00:05:07.700 By Bauer he's referring to Bruno Bauer, who was one of the left Hegelians who had been 51 00:05:07.700 --> 00:05:17.820 a friend of Marx's who had written a book saying that Jews shouldn't be accorded political 52 00:05:17.820 --> 00:05:27.620 rights in Germany until they renounced Judaism because Judaism was a particularistic religion 53 00:05:27.620 --> 00:05:34.900 that really was inconsistent with civil society. 54 00:05:34.900 --> 00:05:39.220 So, Mueller says, were Jews egoistic as Bauer had charged? 55 00:05:39.220 --> 00:05:41.300 Certainly, Marx answered. 56 00:05:41.300 --> 00:05:45.780 But in bourgeois society, everyone was egoistic. 57 00:05:45.780 --> 00:05:52.260 Marx embraces all of the traditional negative characterizations of the Jew repeated by Bauer 58 00:05:52.260 --> 00:05:55.660 and for good measure adds a few of his own. 59 00:05:55.660 --> 00:06:00.300 But he does so in order to stigmatize market activity as such. 60 00:06:00.300 --> 00:06:06.300 Where Marx's strategy is to endorse every negative characterization of market activity 61 00:06:06.300 --> 00:06:11.660 that Christians associated with Jews, but to insist that those qualities have now come 62 00:06:11.660 --> 00:06:17.820 to characterize society as a whole, very much including Christians, that's the end of the 63 00:06:17.820 --> 00:06:18.820 quote. 64 00:06:18.820 --> 00:06:22.760 Marx's argument is a simple one. 65 00:06:22.760 --> 00:06:26.560 Capitalism is based on the pursuit of profit. 66 00:06:26.560 --> 00:06:33.460 Each person is supposed to act to secure his self-interest. This makes universal the trader 67 00:06:33.460 --> 00:06:40.140 ethics characteristic since the Middle Ages of Jewish peddlers and moneylenders. Marx 68 00:06:40.140 --> 00:06:46.820 of course did not advance this view as a purely theoretical account. He deplored this sort 69 00:06:46.820 --> 00:06:55.580 of society. In it, human beings lived alienated both from one another and from their own essence. 70 00:06:55.580 --> 00:07:03.260 Marx expresses his argument in unmistakable terms. Criticizing the right of private property 71 00:07:03.260 --> 00:07:12.700 in the French Constitution of 1793, he says, the right of man to private property is therefore 72 00:07:12.700 --> 00:07:19.900 the right to enjoy one's property and to dispose of it at one's discretion, without 73 00:07:19.900 --> 00:07:27.220 Without regard to other men, independently of society, the right of self-interest. 74 00:07:27.220 --> 00:07:32.740 This individual liberty and its application form the basis of civil society. 75 00:07:32.740 --> 00:07:37.800 It makes everyone see in other men not the realization of his own freedom, but the barrier 76 00:07:37.800 --> 00:07:39.900 to it." 77 00:07:39.900 --> 00:07:46.580 So what Marx is saying here is that the idea of rights, of having a right to property is 78 00:07:46.580 --> 00:07:54.780 is really one that expresses hostility between one person and another because in property 79 00:07:54.780 --> 00:08:02.300 you're saying this belongs to me and not to you and Marx thought that was not really 80 00:08:02.300 --> 00:08:08.300 a way of reflecting a true harmony between people. 81 00:08:08.300 --> 00:08:15.180 It is precisely the attitude toward others here described that according to Marx constitutes 82 00:08:15.180 --> 00:08:17.100 The Essence of Judaism 83 00:08:17.100 --> 00:08:19.380 And now in a famous quotation he says 84 00:08:19.380 --> 00:08:22.900 What is the secular basis of Judaism? 85 00:08:22.900 --> 00:08:25.940 Practical needs self-interest 86 00:08:25.940 --> 00:08:28.700 What is the worldly religion of a Jew? 87 00:08:28.700 --> 00:08:30.260 Huxtering 88 00:08:30.260 --> 00:08:32.180 What is his worldly god? 89 00:08:32.180 --> 00:08:33.860 Money 90 00:08:33.860 --> 00:08:40.420 Marx didn't intend that as very complimentary 91 00:08:40.420 --> 00:08:44.500 How are we to evaluate Marx's argument? 92 00:08:44.500 --> 00:08:56.500 It suffers from two main problems. First, Marx fails to establish a connection between selfish egoistic behavior and the Jewish religion. 93 00:08:56.500 --> 00:09:07.500 Why is egoistic behavior distinctively Jewish? It is no doubt true that Judaism looks favorably on a person's pursuit of his own interests. 94 00:09:07.500 --> 00:09:13.140 In the famous saying of Rabbi Hillel in the first chapter of the Ethics of Our Fathers, 95 00:09:13.140 --> 00:09:19.340 that's a famous compilation of rabbinical sayings that's included in the Talmud, 96 00:09:19.340 --> 00:09:24.880 If I am not for myself, who will be for me? 97 00:09:24.880 --> 00:09:31.340 But an approval of self-interest, as expressed in this saying by Rabbi Hillel, by no means 98 00:09:31.340 --> 00:09:36.020 signifies a selfish disregard for the well-being of others. 99 00:09:36.020 --> 00:09:44.340 One may only recall the continuation of Hillel's saying, If I am only for myself, what am I? 100 00:09:44.340 --> 00:09:50.820 One could easily amass other citations on the role of regard for others in charity in 101 00:09:50.820 --> 00:09:55.220 Judaism, but one more must here suffice. 102 00:09:55.220 --> 00:10:02.260 Jewish sources often view the principal sin of Sodom, the city that God destroyed by firing 103 00:10:02.260 --> 00:10:10.260 and Brimstone as Lack of Charity. As Rabbi Meir Tamari notes in his authoritative exposition 104 00:10:10.260 --> 00:10:18.180 of Jewish law regarding economics, this quotation from Rabbi Tamari, the Mishnah, the Mishnah 105 00:10:18.180 --> 00:10:26.140 is the first part of the Talmud, defined one who said, what's yours is mine and what's 106 00:10:26.140 --> 00:10:32.160 What's mine is mine is an evil man. He who says what's yours is yours and what's mine 107 00:10:32.160 --> 00:10:38.600 is yours is a righteous person. But what's yours is yours and what's mine is mine. Some 108 00:10:38.600 --> 00:10:53.440 say that is the mark of Sodom. So go over what this account of the mission is saying. 109 00:10:53.440 --> 00:11:01.160 What's criticized here as the mark of Sodom is not sort of the obviously evil attitude 110 00:11:01.160 --> 00:11:07.520 where some would say, what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine, but here a strict 111 00:11:07.520 --> 00:11:15.160 adherence to your own property where you're not going to be charitable to others, so to 112 00:11:15.160 --> 00:11:23.080 say, what's mine is mine and what yours is yours, where you refuse all charity is disapproved 113 00:11:23.080 --> 00:11:39.080 So it seems like Marx was clearly mistaken to think that egoism is in this sense of selfish behavior is intrinsic or essential to Judaism. 114 00:11:39.080 --> 00:11:46.080 A defender of Marx might reply by recalling a distinction made earlier. 115 00:11:46.080 --> 00:11:58.080 At the outset, I distinguish the claim that Judaism as a body of doctrine is related to capitalism from the claim that Jews as a group are so related. 116 00:11:58.080 --> 00:12:07.080 One is saying there's something in the body of doctrine that's led to capitalism or is identical with capitalism. 117 00:12:07.080 --> 00:12:25.680 of Capitalism, has the objection just raised to Marx's account ignored this distinction? 118 00:12:25.680 --> 00:12:32.780 Perhaps Marx is not best taken as making a point about Jewish religious doctrine, rather 119 00:12:32.780 --> 00:12:39.580 Is he not claiming that the behavior found in the economic activities of certain Jews, 120 00:12:39.580 --> 00:12:45.980 namely the traders and money lenders, best expresses the essence of capitalism? 121 00:12:45.980 --> 00:12:58.780 I just add here, just incidentally, a difficulty with both readings and Marx, which is if Judaism is capitalism, 122 00:12:58.780 --> 00:13:03.920 How can it be at the same time true that Judaism gave rise to capitalism? 123 00:13:03.920 --> 00:13:09.980 Obviously, Marx does not use is here to denote strict identity. 124 00:13:09.980 --> 00:13:16.260 But to return to this defense, possible defense of Marx, that he was really not talking about 125 00:13:16.260 --> 00:13:23.680 Jewish religion, but rather about particular Jews, namely the traders and moneylenders, 126 00:13:23.680 --> 00:13:30.580 If this is what Marx had in mind, it is no more satisfactory than the earlier version 127 00:13:30.580 --> 00:13:32.380 of his claim. 128 00:13:32.380 --> 00:13:39.140 What is supposed to be specifically Jewish about either selling or lending money, Marx 129 00:13:39.140 --> 00:13:42.100 nowhere informs us. 130 00:13:42.100 --> 00:13:49.820 A more deep-seated failing besets Marx's account of Judaism and capitalism. 131 00:13:49.820 --> 00:13:56.640 Marx characterizes both capitalism and Judaism as based on self-interest, practical need, 132 00:13:56.640 --> 00:14:03.900 selling and money. Surely it would be difficult to find throughout recorded history many large-scale 133 00:14:03.900 --> 00:14:11.300 and complex societies in which these features did not play a prominent role. Contrary to 134 00:14:11.300 --> 00:14:16.940 Marx, neither self-interest nor the pursuit of money is distinctively either capitalist 135 00:14:16.940 --> 00:14:17.940 or Jewish. 136 00:14:17.940 --> 00:14:25.900 I should say this is a point that Max Weber realized when he investigated the origins 137 00:14:25.900 --> 00:14:31.460 of capitalism in his famous work Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism. 138 00:14:31.460 --> 00:14:39.140 What he said is, well, we find trading throughout history, but what we have to do is account 139 00:14:39.140 --> 00:14:41.680 what's distinctive about capitalism. 140 00:14:41.680 --> 00:14:49.520 So Weber is really making the same point I'm making here against Marx, that Marx hasn't 141 00:14:49.520 --> 00:14:56.120 come up with anything distinctive about capitalism when he's talking about people trading or 142 00:14:56.120 --> 00:15:02.200 being interested in pursuit of their own self-interest. 143 00:15:02.200 --> 00:15:08.880 In seeking to exercise self-interest as a feature of the human condition, Marx is beguiled 144 00:15:08.880 --> 00:15:13.180 Followed by a fantasy in which human beings abandon all antagonisms. 145 00:15:13.180 --> 00:15:22.760 You remember the passage I quoted from Marxist criticism of the 1793 French Constitution. 146 00:15:22.760 --> 00:15:29.160 He says that the idea of talking about an individual right is suggesting that one person 147 00:15:29.160 --> 00:15:37.880 is opposed to someone else and he thinks in a truly human society that wouldn't be a feature. 148 00:15:37.880 --> 00:15:45.880 And Rothbard remarks, to Marx, any differences between men and therefore any specialization 149 00:15:45.880 --> 00:15:49.540 in the division of labor is a contradiction. 150 00:15:49.540 --> 00:15:55.940 And the communist goal is to replace that contradiction with harmony among all. 151 00:15:55.940 --> 00:16:02.940 This means that to the Marxists, any individual differences, any diversity among men are contradictions 152 00:16:02.940 --> 00:16:07.900 is to be stamped out and replaced by the uniformity of the anthill. 153 00:16:07.900 --> 00:16:15.020 And quotation, Murray Rothbard had always had a characteristically excellent way of 154 00:16:15.020 --> 00:16:16.740 getting to the heart of an issue. 155 00:16:16.740 --> 00:16:21.740 I think it comes out very well in that quotation. 156 00:16:21.740 --> 00:16:29.900 Jerry Muller, the one I quoted earlier on Marx and the Jewish question, has insightfully 157 00:16:29.900 --> 00:16:35.980 We've already drawn attention to the importance of Marx's essay, but in one respect he goes 158 00:16:35.980 --> 00:16:37.480 too far. 159 00:16:37.480 --> 00:16:44.420 Muller says, for on the question of the Jews contains in embryo most of the subsequent 160 00:16:44.420 --> 00:16:48.140 themes of Marx's critique of capitalism. 161 00:16:48.140 --> 00:16:55.620 If Marx had one big idea, it was that capitalism was the rule of money, itself the expression 162 00:16:55.620 --> 00:16:57.300 of greed. 163 00:16:57.300 --> 00:17:16.500 The rule of capital was fundamentally immoral because it deprived the vast majority in a capitalist society of their humanity, requiring labor that enriched a few capitalists while impoverishing the workers physically and spiritually. 164 00:17:16.500 --> 00:17:24.420 So Muller thinks that Marx's basic criticism of capitalism was that it's a society based 165 00:17:24.420 --> 00:17:33.860 on money-making in which people's humanity is trampled on, so it's fundamentally a moral 166 00:17:33.860 --> 00:17:36.780 criticism of capitalism. 167 00:17:36.780 --> 00:17:41.560 Muller here fundamentally misconceives Marxism. 168 00:17:41.560 --> 00:17:47.440 Marx in Das Kapital has principally in mind a scientific criticism of capitalism based 169 00:17:47.440 --> 00:17:49.640 primarily on the labor theory of value. 170 00:17:49.640 --> 00:17:54.720 Of course, when I say scientific criticism, I don't mean the criticism is correct, the 171 00:17:54.720 --> 00:18:01.960 labor theory of value is wrong, but what Marx thought it was correct, and he intended what 172 00:18:01.960 --> 00:18:06.560 he said as a scientific criticism. 173 00:18:06.560 --> 00:18:13.780 The book, Das Kapital, contains fierce moral invective directed against capitalism, some 174 00:18:13.780 --> 00:18:19.180 of which makes reference to Jewish themes, but this is rhetoric rather than the core 175 00:18:19.180 --> 00:18:20.980 of the book. 176 00:18:20.980 --> 00:18:27.660 One such reference to a Jewish theme, incidentally, occurs in the famous passage of chapter 24 177 00:18:27.660 --> 00:18:34.940 of Das Kapital, which says, accumulate, accumulate, that is Moses and the prophets. 178 00:18:34.940 --> 00:18:43.940 The Jewish reference here is not just the obvious one to Moses, but the entire expression, 179 00:18:43.940 --> 00:18:51.340 Moses and the prophets, refers to two out of the three divisions in the Jewish arrangement 180 00:18:51.340 --> 00:18:54.140 of the books of the Bible. 181 00:18:54.140 --> 00:18:59.660 Marx is saying that for the capitalist accumulation is the Bible. 182 00:18:59.660 --> 00:19:09.260 I should mention that in Das Kapital Marx by no means confines his invective against 183 00:19:09.260 --> 00:19:12.860 religion to remarks about the Jews. 184 00:19:12.860 --> 00:19:20.780 For example, he says referring to the 39 articles of the Church of England, which is the defining 185 00:19:20.780 --> 00:19:27.100 body of doctrine for the Anglican Church, he says the Church of England would sooner 186 00:19:27.100 --> 00:19:42.140 The crucial point that Marx intended his project to science rather than ethics was made long 187 00:19:42.140 --> 00:19:48.100 ago by Werner Zumbart, whom we shall be discussing later. 188 00:19:48.100 --> 00:19:55.300 Before turning from Marx on Capitalism and the Jews, I allow myself one conjecture. 189 00:19:55.300 --> 00:20:01.940 Marx said that the essence of capitalism was egoism. Could awareness of this claim have 190 00:20:01.940 --> 00:20:08.700 influenced the young Ayn Rand, who after all grew up in Soviet Russia, where the writings 191 00:20:08.700 --> 00:20:16.380 of Marx were abundantly available in Russian translation? I ask because she of course also 192 00:20:16.380 --> 00:20:24.080 thought that capitalism was in essence egoism, though she embraced exactly what Marx deplored 193 00:20:24.080 --> 00:20:29.140 and ignored his identification of Judaism with capitalism. 194 00:20:29.140 --> 00:20:36.260 What lessons should we draw from the failure of Marx's attempt to link Judaism with capitalism? 195 00:20:36.260 --> 00:20:44.440 Should we abandon altogether all inquiries along the same lines as fundamentally misguided? 196 00:20:44.440 --> 00:20:48.960 Such a course was urged by Ludwig von Mises. 197 00:20:48.960 --> 00:20:52.000 He remarks in Socialism, 198 00:20:52.000 --> 00:20:56.600 Today the Islamic and Jewish religions are dead. 199 00:20:56.600 --> 00:21:01.180 They offer their adherents nothing more than a ritual. 200 00:21:01.180 --> 00:21:06.940 They know how to prescribe prayers and fasts, certain foods, circumcision and the rest, 201 00:21:06.940 --> 00:21:08.920 but that is all. 202 00:21:08.920 --> 00:21:11.880 They offer nothing to the mind. 203 00:21:11.880 --> 00:21:19.400 They completely despiritualize all they teach and preach are legal forms and external rule. 204 00:21:19.400 --> 00:21:26.760 They lock their follower into a cage of traditional usages in which he is often hardly able to 205 00:21:26.760 --> 00:21:32.360 breathe, but for his inner soul they have no message. 206 00:21:32.360 --> 00:21:36.700 They suppress the soul instead of elevating it and saving it. 207 00:21:36.700 --> 00:21:44.820 For many centuries in Islam, for nearly 2000 years in Jewry, there have been no new religious 208 00:21:44.820 --> 00:21:45.820 movements. 209 00:21:45.820 --> 00:21:52.020 Today, the religion of the Jews is just as it was when the Talmud was drawn up. 210 00:21:52.020 --> 00:22:00.140 So to make obvious how this would relate to our topic, since capitalism is a feature of 211 00:22:00.140 --> 00:22:07.660 of the Modern World, Mises would have to hold that Judaism is irrelevant to it, since he 212 00:22:07.660 --> 00:22:13.460 thinks that Judaism has nothing to say to the modern world, so it couldn't have anything 213 00:22:13.460 --> 00:22:19.420 to say to capitalism, one of the essential features of the modern world. 214 00:22:19.420 --> 00:22:26.340 I do not think that Mises' remarks by themselves settle the questions at issue, even if one 215 00:22:26.340 --> 00:22:34.340 and accepts Mises' highly dubious characterization of Judaism as pure ritual devoid of appeal to the mind. 216 00:22:35.340 --> 00:22:44.340 Mises' comments do not exclude the possibility that legal regulations of the kinds Mises described in such unflattering terms 217 00:22:44.340 --> 00:22:51.340 influence the development of capitalism, either by their content or by the qualities of mind and character 218 00:22:51.340 --> 00:22:55.340 that people who adhere to the rituals tended to develop. 219 00:22:56.340 --> 00:23:03.340 These are no more than possibilities. Where these regulations in fact had such effect is another question. 220 00:23:03.340 --> 00:23:15.340 So if we don't accept that Mises' remarks say that we shouldn't consider the question of Judaism and capitalism at all, 221 00:23:15.340 --> 00:23:23.340 I think I want to go on and we want to turn now to another attempt to connect Judaism and capitalism 222 00:23:23.340 --> 00:23:32.940 In this one, the most significant of all, Werner Zumbarg's The Jews in Modern Capitalism, which appeared in 1911. 223 00:23:32.940 --> 00:23:46.240 Zumbarg conforms to the pattern mentioned earlier, that those who ascribe to the Jews primary responsibility for capitalism tend to be hostile to both Judaism and capitalism. 224 00:23:46.240 --> 00:23:50.940 In Zumbarg's case, this is hardly surprising. 225 00:23:50.940 --> 00:24:02.340 Zonbart began his academic career as a convinced Marxist. In fact, Friedrich Engels took Zonbart very seriously. 226 00:24:02.340 --> 00:24:13.300 Remember, after the only volume of Das Kapital was published in Marx's lifetime, the first volume, which came out in 1867, 227 00:24:13.300 --> 00:24:21.120 And there appeared to be a contradiction in the volume between how the labor theory of 228 00:24:21.120 --> 00:24:28.500 value said that prices, what prices would be and what actual market prices were, that 229 00:24:28.500 --> 00:24:34.620 actual market prices didn't conform to their labor values. 230 00:24:34.620 --> 00:24:42.420 So Marx's attempt to deal with that came out only when the volume three of the book 231 00:24:42.420 --> 00:24:51.060 was published by Engels. But before that happened, various writers tried to come up with solutions 232 00:24:51.060 --> 00:24:56.540 in what they thought how Marx might have solved this problem. Zombart was one of these and 233 00:24:56.540 --> 00:25:03.940 Engels praised Zombart for what he had come up with, even though he didn't get the same 234 00:25:03.940 --> 00:25:10.180 analysis as the one Marx actually had, but Engels thought it was significant. So as I 235 00:25:10.180 --> 00:25:14.820 Say, he began his career as a convinced Marxist. 236 00:25:14.820 --> 00:25:20.420 Though he veered to the right, he remained a socialist to the end, albeit of a peculiar 237 00:25:20.420 --> 00:25:21.420 kind. 238 00:25:21.420 --> 00:25:27.540 And at the end of his career, he was somewhat of a supporter of Hitler, although exactly 239 00:25:27.540 --> 00:25:36.180 how much is disputed, he favored a return to an anti-industrial, sort of an agricultural 240 00:25:36.180 --> 00:25:47.940 Like Marx, he stressed the Jewish involvement in trade as the essence of capitalism. 241 00:25:47.940 --> 00:25:53.660 The Jews, with their trader ethic, had succeeded in transforming the more static values of 242 00:25:53.660 --> 00:25:58.420 the Middle Ages. 243 00:25:58.420 --> 00:26:04.740 The broad outlines of this theory will already be familiar from our discussion of Marx's 244 00:26:04.740 --> 00:26:10.120 essay, but Zumbart developed the position with enormously greater learning in the Jewish 245 00:26:10.120 --> 00:26:16.860 sources and in Jewish history. Zumbart himself says that Marx in his essay, quoting Zumbart, 246 00:26:16.860 --> 00:26:23.920 looked deep into the Jewish soul. After mentioning two other writers, he says, what has been 247 00:26:23.920 --> 00:26:30.800 said about the Jewish spirit since these men, all Jews, wrote is either a repetition of 248 00:26:30.800 --> 00:26:35.880 of what they said or a distortion of the truth. 249 00:26:35.880 --> 00:26:41.980 His favorable reference to Marx's essay should be sufficient to suggest that Zombart was 250 00:26:41.980 --> 00:26:48.800 an unfriendly critic of Judaism, since of course Marx's essay is very hostile to Judaism. 251 00:26:48.800 --> 00:26:52.120 But Milton Friedman descends. 252 00:26:52.120 --> 00:27:01.240 He writes, Zoumbart's book has had in general a highly unfavorable reception, and indeed 253 00:27:01.240 --> 00:27:05.840 something of an aura of antisemitism has come to be attributed to it. 254 00:27:05.840 --> 00:27:12.080 There is nothing in the book itself to justify any charge of antisemitism, though there certainly 255 00:27:12.080 --> 00:27:19.600 is in Zoumbart's writing and behavior several decades later, several decades later, what 256 00:27:19.600 --> 00:27:28.600 Friedman has, I suggest, been deceived by his own strong approval for the behavior and attitudes that Zombart depicts. 257 00:27:28.600 --> 00:27:35.600 Zombart was not praising the Jews, for example, when he ascribed to them the traitor's mentality. 258 00:27:35.600 --> 00:28:02.600 The great strength of his book is that he goes beyond the generalities to be found in Marx's essay and offers specific evidence from Jewish religious sources in history. 259 00:28:02.600 --> 00:28:16.600 He points out, for example, that though a Jew is forbidden to lend money at interest to another Jew, he is permitted, and according to some opinions, required to do so to non-Jews. 260 00:28:16.600 --> 00:28:27.600 The majority opinion is that a Jew is permitted to lend money to non-Jews, but there is a view that a Jew is required to. 261 00:28:27.600 --> 00:28:37.680 Not that he has to lend money to non-Jews, but if he does do so, he has to charge interest. 262 00:28:37.680 --> 00:28:40.720 The ban on taking... 263 00:28:40.720 --> 00:28:45.520 Jewish law sees nothing intrinsically wrong with lending an interest. 264 00:28:45.520 --> 00:28:50.920 The ban on taking interest from fellow Jews stems from the bonds that ought to link fellow 265 00:28:50.920 --> 00:28:51.920 believers. 266 00:28:51.920 --> 00:28:58.520 Incidentally, the prohibition on taking interest from a fellow Jew is more than a negative 267 00:28:58.520 --> 00:29:03.280 requirement, more than saying you're not allowed to take interest. 268 00:29:03.280 --> 00:29:10.320 It is a positive duty to lend money without interest to Jews in need, and free loan societies 269 00:29:10.320 --> 00:29:14.200 have long been a part of the Jewish community. 270 00:29:14.200 --> 00:29:21.160 Zombart expresses the point about taking interest from non-Jews in typically colorful language. 271 00:29:21.160 --> 00:29:27.560 If you read Zumbart, he's much easier to read than Max Weber, for example, tends to 272 00:29:27.560 --> 00:29:30.280 be very dull and abstract. 273 00:29:30.280 --> 00:29:37.640 Zumbart is a very colorful writer who always gives a great many historical examples. 274 00:29:37.640 --> 00:29:43.440 This is what he says, he says, now think of the position in which the pious Jew and the 275 00:29:43.440 --> 00:29:48.880 pious Christian respectively found themselves in the period in which money lending first 276 00:29:48.880 --> 00:29:54.880 became a need in Europe in which eventually gave birth to capitalism. 277 00:29:54.880 --> 00:30:02.040 The good Christian who had been addicted to usury was filled with remorse as he lay dying 278 00:30:02.040 --> 00:30:08.320 ready at the eleventh hour to cast from him the ill-gotten gains which scorched his soul. 279 00:30:08.320 --> 00:30:15.040 And you just say, when he's talking about usury, that doesn't mean as people use it 280 00:30:15.040 --> 00:30:23.040 Today, Charging Exorbitant Rates of Interest, Usury refers to interest of any kind, so usury 281 00:30:23.040 --> 00:30:25.480 is a synonym for interest. 282 00:30:25.480 --> 00:30:35.040 So somebody just talked about how the Christian who lent money at interest would be remorseful 283 00:30:35.040 --> 00:30:36.040 when he's dying. 284 00:30:36.040 --> 00:30:41.720 And then he says, in the Good Jew, in the evening of his days, he gazed upon his well-filled 285 00:30:41.720 --> 00:31:04.480 Zombart does not see the law regarding interest as standing alone. 286 00:31:04.480 --> 00:31:10.800 To the contrary, he maintains that Judaism is a religion of calculative rationality, 287 00:31:10.800 --> 00:31:15.240 peculiarly suited to success under capitalism. 288 00:31:15.240 --> 00:31:23.160 He says, the kinship between Judaism and Caplan is further illustrated by the legally regulated 289 00:31:23.160 --> 00:31:24.720 relationship. 290 00:31:24.720 --> 00:31:32.140 I had almost said the business-like connection, except that the term has a disagreeable connotation 291 00:31:32.140 --> 00:31:34.320 between God and Israel. 292 00:31:34.320 --> 00:31:37.840 I should just say there that's a very interesting rhetorical device. 293 00:31:37.840 --> 00:31:55.840 The contract usually sets forth that man is rewarded for duties performed and punished for duties neglected. 294 00:31:55.840 --> 00:31:59.840 Two consequences must of necessity follow. 295 00:31:59.840 --> 00:32:05.840 First, a constant weighing up of a loss and gain which any action needs must bring. 296 00:32:05.840 --> 00:32:11.800 Banking, and secondly, a complicated scheme of bookkeeping as it were for each individual 297 00:32:11.800 --> 00:32:12.880 person. 298 00:32:12.880 --> 00:32:20.560 So Zumbart is saying in Judaism, great deal of emphasis is given on requirements that 299 00:32:20.560 --> 00:32:28.840 the believer is supposed to do or prohibitions and you have to, when the believer is judged, 300 00:32:28.840 --> 00:32:32.560 his good deeds are weighed against his bad deeds. 301 00:32:32.560 --> 00:32:41.560 So, according to Zombart, this encouraged a calculating frame of mind which he thinks is essential to capitalism. 302 00:32:41.560 --> 00:32:51.560 Zombart makes clear his evaluation of Judaism and capitalism in a passage that evidently escaped Milton Friedman's attention. 303 00:32:51.560 --> 00:32:58.560 In all its reasoning it, referring to Jewish religion, appeals to us as a creation of the intellect, 304 00:32:58.560 --> 00:33:03.940 A thing of thought and purpose projected into the world of organisms, 305 00:33:03.940 --> 00:33:11.440 destined to destroy and to conquer nature's realm and to reign itself in her stead. 306 00:33:11.440 --> 00:33:17.220 Just so capitalism, just so does capitalism appear on the scene, 307 00:33:17.220 --> 00:33:23.480 like the Jewish religion, an alien element in the midst of a natural created world, 308 00:33:23.480 --> 00:33:29.400 like it to something schemed and planned in the midst of teeming life. 309 00:33:29.400 --> 00:33:42.400 This was a theme of German Romanticism, the abstract, alienated intellect was contrasted with the natural world. 310 00:33:42.400 --> 00:33:49.400 So the view was the intellect, if it was taken apart from the natural world, 311 00:33:49.400 --> 00:34:15.800 was a destructive force, and probably the greatest expression of this was in a book by the German philosopher Ludwig Clawges that had the spirit as the adversary of soul, so the spirit would be the rational intellect, would be the adversary of the soul, which would be acting in accord with nature. 312 00:34:15.800 --> 00:34:22.800 What is one to make of all this? The main problem with Zonbart's thesis is obvious. 313 00:34:22.800 --> 00:34:32.800 Though he is right that calculative rationality is integral to capitalism, this disposition is by no means peculiar to Jews. 314 00:34:32.800 --> 00:34:44.800 If so, capitalism cannot be considered Jewish in essence, though Zonbart may well be right that certain traits of mind equip Jews to prosper under capitalism. 315 00:34:44.800 --> 00:34:49.120 Zonbart could hardly ignore this point. 316 00:34:49.120 --> 00:34:54.920 Only a few years before his own book, Max Weber had issued his famous The Protestant 317 00:34:54.920 --> 00:34:58.480 Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that I mentioned before. 318 00:34:58.480 --> 00:35:05.360 In that book, Weber ascribed some of the same traits that Zonbart thought especially Jewish 319 00:35:05.360 --> 00:35:08.280 to the Puritans. 320 00:35:08.280 --> 00:35:16.320 Faber suggested the Puritans were very interested in calculating their good deeds against their 321 00:35:16.320 --> 00:35:18.440 bad deeds. 322 00:35:18.440 --> 00:35:25.720 It cannot be said that Zombart's way of coping with the objection is entirely satisfactory. 323 00:35:25.720 --> 00:35:32.000 He writes, I, let's say Zombart, have already mentioned that Max Faber's study of the importance 324 00:35:32.000 --> 00:35:37.720 of Protestantism for the capitalistic system was the impetus that sent me to consider the 325 00:35:37.720 --> 00:35:56.720 The Importance of a Jew, and now here is his answer to the claim, well, isn't Puritanism, doesn't that have the same calculative rationality that you're saying is Jewish, and his answer is, Puritanism is Judaism. 326 00:35:56.720 --> 00:36:03.160 Zombart rightly stressed the importance for capitalism of lending money at interest, but 327 00:36:03.160 --> 00:36:07.240 allowing this practice is hardly peculiar to Judaism. 328 00:36:07.240 --> 00:36:14.080 It is great an Austrian perspective on the history of economic thought, Rothbard remarks. 329 00:36:14.080 --> 00:36:19.440 Calvin's main contributions to the usury question was in having the courage to dump 330 00:36:19.440 --> 00:36:21.620 the prohibition altogether. 331 00:36:21.620 --> 00:36:27.920 To Calvin, then, usury is perfectly licit, provided it is not charged in loans to the 332 00:36:27.920 --> 00:36:31.140 poor who would be hurt by such payment. 333 00:36:31.140 --> 00:36:34.660 Rothbard continues about a later Calvinist. 334 00:36:34.660 --> 00:36:41.420 The honor of putting the final boot to the usury prohibition belongs to Claudius Salmasius, 335 00:36:41.420 --> 00:36:46.660 who finished off this embarrassing remnant of the mountainous eras of the past. 336 00:36:46.660 --> 00:36:52.880 In short, Salmasius pointed out that money lending was a business like any other and 337 00:36:52.880 --> 00:36:57.000 like other businesses was entitled to charge a market price. 338 00:36:57.000 --> 00:37:02.320 Salmasius also had the courage to point out that there were no valid arguments against 339 00:37:02.320 --> 00:37:06.740 usury either by divine or natural law. 340 00:37:06.740 --> 00:37:15.280 Incidentally, you may recall, Salmasius was the object of an attack by one of the greatest 341 00:37:15.280 --> 00:37:23.960 of All Masters of Invective, John Milton. I urge people to look up what Milton said 342 00:37:23.960 --> 00:37:32.440 about Salmaseous. No doubt, Zombart would respond by declaring Calvin and Salmaseous 343 00:37:32.440 --> 00:37:40.960 to be Jews. We have so far considered and found largely inadequate attempts to connect 344 00:37:40.960 --> 00:37:47.560 Judaism with Capitalism, but we have also to examine the views of those who find a Jewish 345 00:37:47.560 --> 00:37:55.780 impetus behind opposition to capitalism, especially at the beginning of the 20th century, a common 346 00:37:55.780 --> 00:38:03.500 view held at the Bolshevik Revolution was largely a Jewish enterprise. Winston Churchill 347 00:38:03.500 --> 00:38:10.800 wrote in 1920, there is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism 348 00:38:10.800 --> 00:38:16.600 and the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for 349 00:38:16.600 --> 00:38:25.200 the most part atheistic Jews. It is certainly a great one. It probably outweighs all others. 350 00:38:25.200 --> 00:38:31.920 With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, 351 00:38:31.920 --> 00:38:38.920 the principal inspiration driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. It has come out since 352 00:38:38.920 --> 00:38:47.840 Churchill wrote that Lenin did have Jewish ancestry in his background, so what he shouldn't 353 00:38:47.840 --> 00:38:51.400 have said with the notable exception of Lenin. 354 00:38:51.400 --> 00:38:56.160 Churchill by no means thought that all Jews were Bolsheviks. 355 00:38:56.160 --> 00:39:02.600 To the contrary, he contrasted the internationalist Jews behind world revolution with nationalist 356 00:39:02.600 --> 00:39:04.920 Jews, for example, Zionists. 357 00:39:04.920 --> 00:39:14.920 The struggle which is now beginning between the Zionists and the Bolshevik Jews is little less than a struggle for the soul of the Jewish people. 358 00:39:14.920 --> 00:39:20.920 Churchill was but one of many writers of his time with similar views. 359 00:39:20.920 --> 00:39:32.920 As he notes in his article, he had read Nesta Webster, a popular historian of a time who studied conspiracy theories of revolution in among other books, 360 00:39:32.920 --> 00:39:38.940 The French Revolution, A Study in Democracy, World Revolution, and Secret Societies and 361 00:39:38.940 --> 00:39:42.100 Subversive Movement. 362 00:39:42.100 --> 00:39:50.000 Contrary to general belief, Webster did not defend the authenticity of the notorious protocol 363 00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:51.760 to be elders of Zion. 364 00:39:51.760 --> 00:39:59.840 She discusses the question extensively in her book, The Secret Societies, but she doesn't 365 00:39:59.840 --> 00:40:02.760 say it was authentic. 366 00:40:02.760 --> 00:40:08.560 Russia was probably the formal source for the view that communism was Jewish. 367 00:40:08.560 --> 00:40:15.400 Backers of the theory, like Churchill, appealed to the fact that Jews occupied a high number 368 00:40:15.400 --> 00:40:18.880 of positions in the Bolshevik government. 369 00:40:18.880 --> 00:40:25.800 The Irish priest, Father Denis Fahy, published a pamphlet, The Rulers of Russia, containing 370 00:40:25.800 --> 00:40:30.360 long lists of Bolsheviks with Jewish-sounding names. 371 00:40:30.360 --> 00:40:38.480 In Germany, the Nazi writer Alfred Rosenberg sometimes read out such lists over the radio, 372 00:40:38.480 --> 00:40:44.580 which led to the joke that he considered that he thought everybody named Rosenberg was Jewish 373 00:40:44.580 --> 00:40:49.720 except him. 374 00:40:49.720 --> 00:40:56.080 In recent years, the German writer Johannes von Biberstein has devoted a long book to 375 00:40:56.080 --> 00:41:00.760 and the topic Jewish Bolshevism, Myth and Reality. 376 00:41:00.760 --> 00:41:07.000 Before we turn to evaluate this theory, it should be noted that it is possible, however 377 00:41:07.000 --> 00:41:12.920 unlikely it may seem, for someone to hold this view, namely the view that the Jews are 378 00:41:12.920 --> 00:41:21.040 behind communism, the main opposition to capitalism, together with the position we earlier examined 379 00:41:21.040 --> 00:41:25.600 that Jews are responsible for capitalism. 380 00:41:25.600 --> 00:41:32.240 This is more than a bare possibility, Hitler, for one, believed precisely this. 381 00:41:32.240 --> 00:41:38.380 The main failing of the view that connects Judaism and communism is a simple one. 382 00:41:38.380 --> 00:41:40.960 It confuses two questions. 383 00:41:40.960 --> 00:41:47.240 First, why, looking at the historical circumstances that led to the Russian Revolution, were many 384 00:41:47.240 --> 00:41:50.240 Jews attracted to revolution? 385 00:41:50.240 --> 00:41:57.420 And is there anything intrinsic to Judaism that leads to support for communism? 386 00:41:57.420 --> 00:42:02.600 The first question is readily answered when one recalls the long history of anti-Jewish 387 00:42:02.600 --> 00:42:09.440 measures taken by the Tsarist Russian government in the 19th and early 20th centuries. 388 00:42:09.440 --> 00:42:15.500 A similar appeal to particular circumstances would, I think, explain such other instances 389 00:42:15.500 --> 00:42:22.780 of Jewish Support for Socialist Revolutionary Groups as the historical record discloses. 390 00:42:22.780 --> 00:42:28.740 Absent the existence of special circumstances, there is no marked Jewish support for the 391 00:42:28.740 --> 00:42:35.620 overthrow of capitalism. Jerry Muller is right when he says, Milton Friedman's contention 392 00:42:35.620 --> 00:42:42.980 that Jews vilified capitalism while profiting from it is highly distorted. To the extent 393 00:42:42.980 --> 00:42:49.220 that the Jews identified themselves with socialism, it was largely a phenomenon of Eastern European 394 00:42:49.220 --> 00:42:54.740 Jews and their immediate descendants in the years from the late 19th century through the 395 00:42:54.740 --> 00:43:02.060 1930s. And even if one is inclined to think the association between Jews and communism 396 00:43:02.060 --> 00:43:09.700 greater than Muller allows, it is clear that any such affinity has its limit. Even during 397 00:43:09.700 --> 00:43:15.980 In the period when Jewish radicalism was at its height, most Jews were not communists 398 00:43:15.980 --> 00:43:22.740 and most communists were not Jews. It would be difficult to consider the Chinese communist 399 00:43:22.740 --> 00:43:32.100 movement an instance of Jewish Bolshevism. Although I have read a book by an anti-Semitic 400 00:43:32.100 --> 00:43:46.940 To show a close intellectual connection between Judaism and communism would require some derivation 401 00:43:46.940 --> 00:43:53.820 of communist ideas from Jewish religious doctrine, and that is not in the offing. 402 00:43:53.820 --> 00:43:59.460 True enough, radicals have appealed to Jewish texts to support their views. 403 00:43:59.460 --> 00:44:05.820 Michael Walser has traced the role of the Exodus narrative on revolutionary thought. 404 00:44:05.820 --> 00:44:11.980 He says, I, Walser, have found the Exodus almost everywhere, often in unsuspected places. 405 00:44:11.980 --> 00:44:19.140 It is central to the communist theology or anti-theology of Ernst Bloch, who was a Marxist 406 00:44:19.140 --> 00:44:21.780 writer who wrote on utopias. 407 00:44:21.780 --> 00:44:28.460 It is the subject of a book called Moses in Red by Lincoln Steffens, published in 1926, 408 00:44:28.460 --> 00:44:35.020 A detailed account of Israel's political struggles in the wilderness in the defense of Leninist politics. 409 00:44:35.020 --> 00:44:42.620 And in his book, he lists many more such instances of the influence of the Exodus story. 410 00:44:42.620 --> 00:44:50.300 Others have found in the Jewish prophets an inspiration for socialist schemes for reform of the world. 411 00:44:50.300 --> 00:44:58.140 A once famous book of the 1920s, A Religion of Truth, Justice and Peace by Isadora Singer, 412 00:44:58.140 --> 00:45:05.300 The editor of the Jewish Encyclopedia's standard reference work argued that the world leadership 413 00:45:05.300 --> 00:45:12.620 of a social justice movement is offered to the Jew. Singer based his argument on an appeal 414 00:45:12.620 --> 00:45:19.660 to the words of Amos, Isaiah, Micah and other prophets. Walzer and Singer, to the contrary 415 00:45:19.660 --> 00:45:26.740 notwithstanding, the claim that Judaism teaches socialism or communism as a general political 416 00:45:26.740 --> 00:45:33.980 Program cannot succeed. The basic reason such an attempt must fail is the same one that 417 00:45:33.980 --> 00:45:41.180 dooms the theories that link Judaism and capitalism. The religious precepts of Judaism are meant 418 00:45:41.180 --> 00:45:48.760 to apply only to Jews. They do not constitute an ethical system that prescribes a best social 419 00:45:48.760 --> 00:45:57.000 Order for All of Humanity, and to avert an objection, the Jewish sources did not prescribe 420 00:45:57.000 --> 00:46:05.480 socialism for the Jewish community either, quite the contrary, the Jewish sources strongly 421 00:46:05.480 --> 00:46:13.720 support private property, although the system elaborated for the Jewish community is not 422 00:46:13.720 --> 00:46:19.240 Identical to Free Market Capitalism either, but the basic point is that the Jewish laws 423 00:46:19.240 --> 00:46:22.960 are intended only for the Jewish community. 424 00:46:22.960 --> 00:46:28.800 As Meir Tamari, the rabbi quoted earlier, who has written the authoritative account 425 00:46:28.800 --> 00:46:36.760 of Jewish law and economics, says, for centuries, Jews enjoyed autonomy in many countries and 426 00:46:36.760 --> 00:46:42.520 maintained rabbinic codes of law which regulate and govern their economic activity, thereby 427 00:46:42.520 --> 00:46:47.040 by preserving its specifically Jewish characteristics. 428 00:46:47.040 --> 00:46:52.240 The Bible and the homiletical literature established an ethical moral framework within which Jewish 429 00:46:52.240 --> 00:46:53.740 communities operated. 430 00:46:53.740 --> 00:46:58.040 So he's saying these are laws just for the Jewish community. 431 00:46:58.040 --> 00:47:04.600 I conclude then that although Mises radically underrated the intellectual merit of the Jewish 432 00:47:04.600 --> 00:47:09.460 sources, he was not far from the truth in thinking that there are no direct connections 433 00:47:09.460 --> 00:47:16.460 has to be drawn between Judaism and Capitalism. Thank you.