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Everything's there. I want to welcome everyone back to the
Peking Yona Show. Thomas, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2: I'm doing well. Thanks for hosting me.
Speaker 1: Of course, I'm going to talk about one of one
of my favorite writers today.
Speaker 2: So I want to talk about Werner Sombart, because Erner
Sombart is an important theorist in his own right, and
he's been a lot more impactful than people think, even
Paul Johnson, who's as normy as can be normy coded.
And don't get me wrong, because he's written some pretty
good books. You know, I cite the History of Christianity
not infrequently, he's too kind of similar books or a
History of the American People, which if you notice, he
wrote that as a director of Buttle that Howard is
in this nonsense, and he wrote about a history of Christianity.
The latter is better than the former, but the former
is not bad. And especially on early American history sixteenth
century to around the world in the States, it's pretty solid.
But he, he of all people, cites Sombart. Obviously that's
a qualifiably and I'll get into what I mean by
that as we progress in this discussion, but my point
is Sombart, he's yes, he's rather esoteric, owing to the
school of of academic culture from where he emerged. But
you know, he's there's a very wide spectrum of of
intellectual endeavor where he had a very impactful you know,
legacy and the term late capitalism specifically, but even capitalism
entering into the conceptual and verbal lexicon that very much
goes to Sombart. You know, if you read Dos capital
I mean Marx obviously talks about capitalists structures, but capitalism
as a kind of complete sociological phenomenon that very much
owes to Sombart. And we'll get into why that is.
In any event, a lot of the subs are asking
me in part incidental discussion on substect chat about competing
socialisms or you know, what the discursive environment was that
Marxism conquered, as it were, because there was a very active,
you know, discourse on the subject matter of socialism that
really characterized European social thought. I'd argue probably from around
the time at Edmund Burke until you know, really until
Marks and Angles became active and disseminating their theories through
mass dissemination of published material and not just within you know,
university cloisters and things like that. But so people wanted to,
you know, talk about that kind of stuff. And Werner Sombart.
I think Werner Sombart and George Sorell if you're talking
about if you're talking about the the new right as
it existed in Europe, you know, the concertive revolutionaries and
then the fascists and the national Socialists and myriad iterations,
iterations of radical righteous thought from the turn of the
twentieth century onward. You know, George Sorel and Werner Sombart,
their impact can't be overstated. And Sombart generally, like I
just said, I mean, I think cREL is important as
an enduring significance, but that somebody is sooteric and that's
somewhat ideologically coded in favor of certain conceptual sympathies. Sombart, Yeah,
Sombert definitely has a I would you go as far
as the right is definitely conservative, I mean, is in
the in the tradition of ficta, you know, he was,
he was right wing in a sense, but there's a
general relevance to sociology, political theory, and most sigamerantly political economy.
Because Sombart accomplished something that Marcus didn't. He was a
competent economist as well as being an a depth sociologist,
and Marx was not competent in economics. Intrinsic to Marxism
is a repudiation of conventional practice, which in of itself
isn't That doesn't defeat its validity, but it can't be
said to be an economic science, and there's a scientific
aspect of economics. I don't put any great stock in
economic modeling. I don't think that is a complete I
don't think it creates a complete conceptual picture. I don't
think the data yielded therein describes the totality of economic
reality and the ontology ontological aspects they're in. But there
is a place for it, you know. I mean the
point last time, and I'm sure people will say mean
things about me on account of it that Marxist economists
a much remind me of Anisians, and they're almost religious
fervor about this idea that economic modeling is is is,
you know, doesn't yield anything, and not just that it's
it's almost immoral to resort to it, because the data
yields corrupts, you know, conclusions that both camps begin with
and then proceed from which none of itself, is you know,
any anything that proports to be an economic science, but
that begins with the conclusion isn't any such thing. But
Bernard Sombert was primarily known for two seminal texts. One
was why is there no Socialism in the United States?
The other one is the Jews and Modern Capitalism. The
latter is quite controversial for I think reasons that are
self evidence, okay. Ury Slivsky cited that directly and indirectly
quite a bit in the Jewish century. He essentially agrees
with the core thesis that capitalism and again Sombart was
instrumental in coining capitalism is a conceptual signifier. So he
was talking about a discrete worldview, not just the way
of doing business. And Somber was a contemporary of Max Weber,
and obviously Max Weber he attributed he's a lot a
lot of what made him very successfully. He truded to Calvinism, okay,
and the sociological aspects of it that tended to favor
the creation of wealth and it's sort of active engagement,
like people who in more traditional societies would be viewed
as commoners and not particularly prone to wealth creation. You know,
Baber made a big deal about that. Well. Sombert's book
The Jews and Modern Capitalism, that that's he wrote that
as an intended counterpart to Max Weber's book on Calvinism
and and prodes and Ethics, And I want to mostly
focus on his book on the United States, but briefly,
Sombart basically says that Jews were hostile to the guild system,
and they were hostile to fix capital in lua fluid
capital in a large part for political and social reasons,
you know, because the guild system and the feudal system.
It wasn't just that Jews excelled at at finance, aspects
of national economics such as you know, there were national
economies in the Middle Ages and early Modern period. You know, instinctively,
they had this antipathy to other modalities of economic life
because that to them, that was acxiomatically associated with people
who who despised them and oppress them. This wasn't even
totally conscious, like some are is not saying. There was
some rabbinic council that said, see, we we've got to
do away with the leather workers guild because they're dirty goum.
I mean, I'm sure some people thought that way, but
you know, intrinsic to the Jewish rule of social existence
was this antipathy, you know. And one of the reasons
syndicalism took root in Europe. I think it was an
attempt to repair the social fabric that people getting ripped
out of by the collapse of the interdependence that characterized feudalism,
you know. And that's one of the reasons why even
left wing syndical is we're almost unfeelingly anti Jewish. You know.
That's not some accidents, and it's not just because everybody's
prejudiced irrationally or something. You know, the and anything and
any kind of lay, any kind of mobilized labor concern
that especially that which tends towards fixed capital and the
idea of a self regulating kind of craft guild extrapolated
to modern production means that especially tends to be just
anti Jewish. Okay, you don't really have a counterpart for
that in America, but you know, it's different than you know.
And then this, then this tracks even too, even in places,
even even in places like Hungary or like Romania where
Jews didn't just have power in the Nasca and revolutionary
movement on the you know, on on the on the
kind of side of the pulling out the ranks of
political soldiery, you know, like like the Czech on the
Soviet Union. You know, in places like Hungary, and David
Irvan makes a spongeable uprising from inception throughout you know there,
there really was a Jewish cadre that kind of controlled
the communist movement there. And despite their proletarian sensibilities, they
were a hostile to traditional labor organizational modalities, like made
no mistake, they wanted to replace it with something else,
and being at begetting class warfare is not the same thing,
you know, just to be clear, but that, like I said,
I don't I don't want I don't want to deep
dive into that book right now. But moving on the
way to understand Sombar, this also relates to Marx because
you know, like I said a minute ago, and like
at the point I emphasized, as we've discussed marks, you've
gotta understand where Mars was coming from, you know, not
just in terms of his prejudices based on his own
heritage and things that were intrinsic to his worldview. But
Marx didn't devise this idea of integrating sociology and political
theory and economics into this unitary body of of of
theoretical research. That's that was the way that Germans did
things and their traditional academy. This is kind of what
succeeded scholasticism, you know, and that's that's one of the
reasons why the traditional university system, I mean, it's traditional
to us. It's what it came about really in the
early modern period in Europe. But like what we what
we think of as high academ that's basically a German
you know, innovation or it's a German kind of conceptual structure.
The uh, the Gttingen School of History, that's essentially the
the foundation of historicism. Okay, it was the center the
University of Gottingen. Uh, that's where that was the original
center of history as an academic discipline, you know, not
not just something that was kind of the domain a
churchman and you know, people who were documenting, you know,
the guys in the employee of political authorities were documenting
military events and things. You know, history has a discreete
domain of academic inquiry and you know, philosophically rigorous academic
endeavor that that really came from the gut Engen culture,
you know, and it was one of the newest universities
in Europe. It was founded in the seventeen thirties, which
seems ancient to us, but against most of the most
icon of the universities like literally came out of the
medieval Catholic Church. You know. That's one of the reason
is it's a joke when these half assed kind of
new atheist is like the potic like the Church. They
would say the Church, they as if there's some monolith
that there's no such thing as sectarian identities. But you know,
the Church is anti intellectual. It's like, well, actually, like
what you know is intellectualism comes from the Church if
stupid fuck? But the uh, you know, the people in
this kind of new university structure, they wanted to combine
critical methods that were you know, very much privileged going
to the scientific Revolution. They wanted to combine that kind
of methodology with traditional philosophical historians and the way they
did things, you know, like Voltaire and Edward given specifically,
you know, but they also they were they were the
ones that were responsible for first devising a scientist basis
for historical research. The difference is, obviously the angle Saxon
way was to crowd out all other modes of analysis
and inquiry in favor of the scientific method. And that's
a mistake according to the traditional European view as well
as that you know, most other places. But as we
talked about before, I mean, if we're talking about the
intellectual tradition anywhere, we're talking about something derivative of the
Western tradition. So I don't think I need to elaborately
explicate what I mean by that. But the German approach
to economics, academic economics, as well as to public administration,
and that held sway through. The third right was this
historical school of economics that combined to storicism anthropology, you know,
understandings of the contingencies of political structures and economic development,
to race and ethnos and historical experience. The idea of
economics being this discrete, departmentalized science that didn't exist in
Europe proper until the fifties. Okay, and you'll notice Joseph
Schumpeter very much came out of this school. Okay. And
I maintain the pushbag is going to be people saying, well,
how can you criticize the Austrian school, then hold out
people like Schumpeter. All he was with some speculative sociologists. No,
he wasn't read business cycles. One of the strengths of
it is that it's incredibly rigorous in its application of
the scientific method to economic data. It's an incredibly difficult read. Okay,
it will take you years to get through both values.
I'm not kidding. The issue with Shrumpeter, though, is that
he was also a historicist, Okay, And that's the point
I'm getting at. It's not one or the other. That's
also why I object, honestly, I mean just for the
sake of intelligibility. And the tagline of the series we're
doing is continental philosophy. That's the way you have to
discuss things continental versus analytic and analytic Analytic is basically
a stand in for angle sex and or Anglo sphere philosophy,
which is essentially the philosophy of mathematics or formal logic.
It's not one of the other, okay, Or rather, the
way I think of it as analytic philosophy. There's an
intrinsic prejudice in analytic philosophy to non empirical methods. But
the converse isn't true. The German school of economics doesn't
somehow disdain empirical methods, even Marks didn't. It's just that
its conclusions couldn't be borne out by those methods. And
he began with a conclusion, because any political partisan does that,
you know. And if your partisan commitment is inseparable from
your view of the ontological aspects of economics, you're repudiating
your own postulates if you subjected to an empirical scrutiny
in lieu of a philosophical analysis or what passes for one. Interestingly,
the German Historical School attracted a lot of American students
we studied over there, particularly after Max Weber came to prominence. Okay,
you know, he's another example of a German Historical School
economist having a huge impact, you know, and you see
this even that's one of the ironies too, of these
progressives and the New Dealers, who in part were aping
Anglophone sensibilities. And you know, when the English establishment lost
its mind and decided to target everything to tonics is
their enemy. And also, of course, you know, there's the
Semitic influence that I don't think needs to be stated,
But everything about American administration, American national economics, the public
education system, the US military is essentially filtered from Germany,
and even to this day. Well, I mean, it's interesting,
isn't it that the US army in the late Cold
War they fully adopted mission oriented tactics instead of literally
wearing stallhelms, you know, and then every all about Americans
send their kids to kindergarten. I mean you had to,
you know. And fred Frederick List essentially presented the roadmap
for what became guilded age economics. Yet you know, the
same people who were implementing these reforms were railing against
German militarism and Teutonic barbarism and racism. So we call
cognitive dissonance writ large. But you know, the historical school again,
it's not just the sister discipline of historicism, they're one
and the same. Its emphases are simply discretely oriented towards economics.
You know, the German historical school held up the key
source of knowledge about human actions and economic matters was
culture specific, because all human activity at scale, and particularly
that of a political nature, is culture specific and historically contingent.
So it's impossible to generalize over space and time about
economic activity quad economics. Now, mind you, people at Trumpeter
and like Sombart and even like Marx, they favored long
views in terms of their data sets. But that's a
different thing because you're talking about a discrete culture or nation,
or the political configuration or constellation of nationalities, you know,
engaging in economics in the historically contingent capacity that discrete
populations do, you know, within the param of their politics.
That's a different thing. That's different than declaring that there's
absolute economic comparatives that transcend you know, temporal limitations and
epochs and races and cultures. You know, you can say
that all humans have economics, which is true whether you're
talking about some Zandi tribe and some cut in Africa,
or whether you're talking about you know, Japan and in
Zenith in the eighties. There is something called economics, just
as like there's something called political behavior. But that's where
universal criterion characteristics end. So that's that's why the German
school or the historical school rejected the universal validity of
economic theorems, and it favored a historically empirical approach. You know,
what is the experience of this nation, of these people,
of this population, just as one would and determining the
prime symbols that the feature most prominently in the symbolic
psychology of a culture and question and how that informs
political and social values and things. That's the way to
understand it. Their methodology drew very strong influence from Leopold
von Rank, who, in the mind that saw him, he's
considered the father of his historicism. I'd say ficta is,
but that's academic. I don't mean that in a punting way.
I mean it's literally like an academic controversy. Von Rank
he wasn't an economist, but he insisted on source based analysis,
you know, and direct testimony and things of this nature,
and the literal artifacts of the culture in question, controlling
for certain variables, you know, of a temporal nature and
other things in order to identify any given society's approach
to economic activity and behavior. And also, I mean another
aspect of this is there's sectarian or religious orientation. Okay,
I mean things like this, you know, how they view authority,
all this kind of stuff, and not accidentally or not incidentally,
you know, people who recognize that methodology is the kind
of thing that I employ and that I learned from
people like David Irvin and Norman Davies. You know, revisionism
is something of a return to form and tried and
tested ways methodologically speaking, So yeah, you think of you
think of leopoldmon rank As as the father of source
based history and incidentally the seminar teaching method, which is
different than what people call the Socratic method. And for
those the subs are in law school, you're not actually
practicing the Socratic method and what you're doing in law
school that's just like what they like to call it,
and it's a pretext for a law professors to try
and embarrass you and put you on the spot. Made
with the ubiquity of data, the ways is they can't
do that anymore. But the uh that seminar method of
a university lecture that that that that's that's the German
way of doing things. And specifically it came out of
the German historical school and uh von rank building on
the Gutingen schools conventions, he established this ongoing historical seminar,
you know, where he emphasized original source documents, you know,
primary sources, narrative history and in understanding the role of
economics and the state system, which again was a paramount
interest to his because he wasn't an economist, you know,
at base he was a historicist and a political theory guy.
You know, he said, okay, what what's the narrative history
of this people in question? How do they interact in
the international system in their epoch, and what's their impression
of their role within those systems? And this was so
impactful on the continent in the UK and even in
American antidem he was ennobled, thus the Vaughan in his name.
He wasn't born to aristocratic pedigree, arguably, and this comes
up a lot in Paul Goffried's stuff. Von Urach was
probably the single biggest influence on nineteenth century historiographical studies.
You know, everything was basically in dialogue with his methodology
or directly abiding it. And I realized, this is a
long introduction. This is essential to understand Sombart, but also
Marx and essentially every school of socialism, including the Frankfurt school,
which kind of misguided as they were, there was a logical,
if flawed progression whereby pure economics was almost totally eschewed
from their analysis of revolutionary praxis and what would be
effective in the era, And that's fundamentally what they were
concerned with. They weren't trying to arrive at fundamental truth
is about the human condition based on rigorous anthropological inquiry
and comparative analysis. Obviously, and we'll get to that too,
if that wouldn't bore the subs to death. But Sombart
the man, Interestingly, Sombart I believe he's the only economist
that Julius Evela wrote about extensively and sought out for correspondence,
which is interesting Evella. Despite his reputation as a mystic,
which was not misplaced. One of the reasons why you
praise Sombart is because he considered him to have an
underst standing of the emphases in research methodology that were
significant to the traditional school. But he his analytical methods
removed from the deformations and conceptual biases of materialist sociology, specifically,
you know, the Marxist Leninist type. According to evil, economic
life is composed not just the material quantities and physical
processes and biological organisms, but there's a spiritual or if
you prefer an idealist, an abstract conception of it. That's essential.
You know, that culminates in a symbolic psychological overlay. You know,
there is there is such a thing as an economic spirit,
and this is value centric. That's what Vaper's getting at
in his discussion of Calvinism as a sociological imperative and
an anthropological phenomenon and an animating principle that not just characterizes,
but renders possible an entire mode of economical life. You know,
And obviously Sombart's book on the Jews of Modern Capitalism
emphasides that, but so did Sombart's book on America and
Adolf Hitler were very much agreed with Sombart's diagnosis, which
was very unflattering to Europeans, almost punitive. And I made
the point, i believe, in one of our previous discussions
when we were talking specifically about the Brendan Simms historical
biographia Hitler. You know, Hitler made the point that Europeans
were deteriorating and that a lot of the best European
racial stock, in his estimation, had ended up in America,
and that psychologically, in many ways, Americans were more robust,
and the Americans of that era, you know, an America
born in the frontier and racial warfare and all manner
of creative destruction. You know, they were unwilling to be
servile in the way that Europeans have been conditioned to be,
and even physically. A fascinating data point in the Battle
of the Hurritcan Forest, you know, and among other things,
that was the couses defeat ever issued to the US Army.
American soldiers than German soldiers with similar wounds caused by
similar identical caliber weapons. Americans tended to survive something like
two to one compared to their German enemies because physically
they were just more robust. They just had more fat
and muscle on them. It was harder to break them
by shooting them. And that's not a minor thing, you know,
and part of the national socialist imperative. You know. I
made the point. Hitler wasn't going around saying Europe is
the master race or Germans are Europeans are quite the contrary.
He was saying, we need to become that way because
we are losing. And you know, from the Thirty Years
War onward, Europe suffered a series of punctuity catastrophes that
if weren't remedied, would lead to the death of Europe
as a civilization, you know, And Sombart echoed a lot
of that, or he Hitler echoed, was echoing a lot
of what Sombart observed. And like I said, there's there's
data points to to store this up. I mean additionally, too,
the you know, America contained the bulk of the world's
remaining natural resources, and that's that's true still, and that
that that changes things too. Just's on its own terms,
but the racial stock or the element that constitutes the
majority or at least the driving engine of economic and
productive life, they've got to be able to not just
extract those resources, but convert them to be utilized or
render those things into value added manufacturers obviously, and the
ability of Americans to do that at scale itself in
a premuffacial way. It was demonishrative of the concern it was,
you know, it was a concern, but also it was
you know, like I said, rather praising of American Uh
mentioned material contra that in Germany, which is really interesting,
but uh, the I realized that was tangential. But I
think it's I think it's important, not just demonstrative, but
the uh, you know, and again I'll wrap up this
Evola discussion in a minute, but I think it's significant
on its own terms, but also to demonstrate what was
what wasn't is important about Sombard. To the rightest intellectual canon,
the immediate and instinctive purposes of production processes are are
somewhat secondary to it animates, you know, pursuit of the
capitalization literally of those processes and of those raw materials.
Laboring in this way is a is an objective in
itself too. Great races and cultures and increasingly, you know,
in the twentieth century, where potentialities were truly becoming what theretofore,
Uh it seemed impossible. You know, this this was especially
poignant and relevant. It's not prosperity arrives because superior races.
That's the that's the bounty of their labors. That's not
the reason why they do labor. I guess it's you know,
a better way to think about it. You know. And
despite people think people like Sombart weren't anti money or
anti wealth or something, or they weren't hair shared to
view the American way as being inherently corrupting, there is
obviously serious problems with America even back then, and some
are acknowledged that. But you know again, great wealth is
the bounty of great and imaginative labors. And also wealth
makes all of the things possible. You know. The idea
is a surplus, not so you can hord things and
be greedy and and and indulge yourself. It's because it
frees up man collectively for high cultural activities or for
you know, things that are transcendent and truly great. You know,
whether it's the conquest of space, or whether it's you know,
making great works of art, or whether it's in improving
the human condition towards physical and spiritual and intellectual excellence,
or whether it's creating instantaneous and global networks and communication,
you know, like we have now. People take for granted
how remarkable these things are. I don't sound corny, but
like I was thinking today, every time I buy groceries
at Target, I realize people don't like Target. I don't
really either, but I'm on a budget because I'm kind
of a poor writer, and they've got the cheapest produce
and stuff. But it's I've got a giant tub of
coffee beans in my kitchen. I got fresh fruit from
like three different continents. I got a case of bottled water.
I can grab whatever I want. I got a cart
and a cigarettes. I got the kind of chewing them
I like. I live better than a great condid. You know.
I'm like some poor guy who writes stuff that is
truly incredible, and I don't think people realize that. You know,
in my pocket, I've got what's nominally a phone, but
I can talk to anybody and were on the planet
except maybe the Amazonian basin or Antarctica, you know. And
being just some random guy who can do that and
have all that stuff that's completely insane. Even even in
the nineteen fifties, it was a luxury to have decent
coffee and a lot of Europe you know. I mean,
think about that, and yeah, I mean too much of
a good thing, and many people complacent. But it's incredible
the uh that these kinds of things were devised and
can can yield what they do. I mean obviously as
an expiration day, you know, and that needs to be
taken seriously too, But I don't think people realize how
remarkable this is and the amount of research and man
hours and labor it required to generate these modern conveniences.
I really don't. I mean, I know they don't because
I hear the way people talk. You know, it's it's
as if this stuff literally just falls out of the
sky or something. But you know, and that itself is
a Faustian imperative. You know, that's why there's something misguided.
I remember, I think this was years back, but this
sentiment is repeated, or at least it's conveyed and slightly different,
you know, metaphors or language. When that movie Fatherland came out,
it's based on the Robert Harris book. You know, it's
about a third Orne victory and the movie slash book
opens and nineteen sixty four where the Reich is preparing
for Hitler's seventy fifth birthday and President Joe Kennedy, who
in this counterfactual timeline being on his president's it's this
big state visit to Berlin because this Cold War has
been going on between America and the Reich since the
Reich won the war. And there's a really it's a
combination of Matte paintings or matt tape paintings and early
CGI that renders this futuristic Berlin and some reviewers said, yeah,
there's the perverse collision of this racism and this this
reverence for the past, but with this dystopian futurism, it
doesn't make any sense. I'm like, no, it absolutely makes sense.
If you don't understand the future of sensibility national socialism,
you don't understand national socialism. It's not reactionary. That's the
whole point. The all point was we're not trying to
turn the clock back, where we're not trying to go
back to the time of the Peasants War, where we're
not trying to make our people ignorance that they're not
worldly and thus there are childlike in their and their morals,
nothing like that. You know. It was uh in uh.
It is about overcoming uh, what therefore had been the
realities of of of cast, even in higher races. You know,
like Younger said, the concept of the anarch that was
a concept taking very serious of national socialism, the new
national serviists man. He's neither master nor slave. He's a
self contained god man almost you know, it would be
he's not a slave because he couldn't be a slave.
He's not a master in the traditional sense because within
his racial community there are no slaves. You know, the
only the only formal equality can exist but between uh,
you know, a race of anarchs, and that's important. And incidentally,
that's the kind of equality people like Currell or Sobart
were talking about. You know, of course, Uh, there is
a there is you do need slave labor to build
something like the thousand year Reich that was envisioned, but
you know, those slaves are drawn from your vanquished enemies
outside of the race, you know, and the race including
all of Europe. And that's a very brutal proposition. But
you know, I used to point out to this lady
that I was tight with. I used to take her
she she was not in a current of the museum
campus with me a lot, like when we were in
law school, and she really liked the Egypt exhibit at
the Field Museum. They've got a whole but they've got
a permanent Egypt exhibit, like incredible stuff. And uh, one
of the exhibits they've got a they've got a pyramid stone,
you know, it's like seven thousand pounds and it's on
these skids in this uh, on this like thick plexiglass thing,
and they're staying there to cut the friction and there's
a chain and like kids climbing it and stuff, but
they invite you to try to pull it to get
a sense of like the sheer weight of this thing,
you know. And uh, she was always taking me to
task for once she perceived it is like really callous
things that I'd say about historical processes. And I'm like, look,
you know, I'm like, you know, when she'd been to
Egypt and been to like the Valley of the Kings
and stuff, I'm like, you know, it was it was
it was slave labor, and it was strong men who
were breaking themselves hauling these giant stones, you know, to
build those pyramids. I'm like, where do you think they
came from? You think robots built them? You know. I
was trying not to be too mean about it. But
the degree to which all high culture is literally built
on the backs the once strong backs, you know, broken
by the way to their burdens of slaves, you know,
millions of them. The historical process is an endless march
of slaves, their backs stooped by these giant stones and things,
you know. And that that's also think people should shy
away from accept anything about some Art's personal background. He
was he was born to wealth. His father was a
liberal politician in the eighteen forty eight sense, and to
be clear, a lot of a lot of uh, I mean,
there's a lot of a lot of the eighteen forty
eight revolutionaries where the descendants of Jacob Is in a real sense,
but a lot of them. Also we're very Catholic, and
we're very concerned with the equity between the classes and things,
and sence, they had sympathy for liberalizing tendencies. This wasn't
a Jacobin type sensibility, you know. To be clear, I'm
not saying they were right, but these distinctions are important.
But he was a son of a wealthy industrialist and
a state owner, and like I said, politician Anton Ludwig Sombart,
he initially studied law and economics. He received his PhD
from Berlin mostly in the direction of Adolf Wagner. EDL.
Wagner was kind of the other Wagner, and there was
no relation between him as far as far as I know,
and I've looked into it and the Wagner family, you know,
but Atolf Wagner to this day, you crack an economics
textbook or a take a class from political economy, your
teacher and or your text will refer to Wagner's law,
also known as the law of increasing state activity. And
Wagner's law postulates that the public expenditure in any modern
state acxiomatically increases as national income arises. And there's no
exception to this date to this rule. It's closely tied
to industrialization, but that's not that that's not the this
positive cause. It basically predicts that the development of an
industrial economy will always lead to an increased share of
public expenditure in GNP and that welfare states always developed
from free market capitalist paradigms. Because once the budget comes
up for vote, which really is all we're talking about.
In a late capitalist state ruled by a managerial system
or with somebody like Somber what it called the parliamentary system,
the body politic will always vote for entitlements, you know,
and even it's not even a question, and there might
be entire political cultures built out of pace people saying
we need to cut entitlements, but as they're saying that
they're they're they're remaining off is based on the distribution
of entitlements. So it's almost this, it's almost this conscious irony.
You're this kind of polite fiction, you know what I mean?
You see that here? You know, I meant large like there.
How are the Republicans some small government party? You know they? Uh,
I mean that's it's it's not even standing on ceremony.
It's just it's there's there's nothing. There's nothing there. It's
just uh, it's it's it's not even performative because there's
not even there's not there's not even perfunctory cuts to
the uh, permanent bureaucracy and and the entitlement structure. I
don't think it's an accident. I'm not some like Elon
Musk fanboy. I have some serious I I don't think
he's a good guy at all. However, it's not an
accident that when Doge became appeared to, you know, have
some actual momentum at least UH with regards entrenched interest
groups outside of the deep state, suddenly suddenly Musk became
this bad guy. You know. It's not that that's that
wasn't Trump's decisions. Trump something of a cipher, you know,
I mean, I realized this is a tangential thing, but
that's that that's not an accident, and it's not you know,
it's not it's not must be the liability he was
saying quickly incorrect things or something. And if that, if
that was the case, Trump would fire j R f
K two immediately. You know. It's it's what I said
it was, you know. And again and not I'm not
saying Musc is some good guy or something, but he
was correct and in in some of his sentiments. And
and Doge was something. I mean, the way he went
about it was stupid and the branding was stupid, but
the sentiment was correct. But that's a non starter. I
guess Musk is based is like literally autistic. He doesn't
understand why that's not going to work. They can't come
from some policy perspective. They can't come from the Oval office.
You know. You can cut taxes, you know, but that's
a different thing, you know, and that's always popular, even
if it even if there's you know, not a real
impact in terms of the in terms of the percentage
of a GMP that's dedicated to public revenue. But in
any event, flushing further out Wagner's law concombinant obviously, with
this increase share that outlays occupy a GNP the public
sector and the share it occupies, and the national economy
grows continually and ultimately this becomes unsustainable, you know. And sociologically,
this increase in state expenditure, it derives, according to Vager's law,
from three sources, which although long term this slays the
golden goose, short term, it's in relative short term. I mean,
I don't mean in terms of weeks or years. We're
hunging decades. But really the only way the modern state,
the late capitalist state, cannot sustain itself is through these
state expenditures that fund social activities. The state, you know,
social engineering and welfare. State l lays administrative and protective actions,
you know, mostly relating to the aforementioned activities, and three
direct welfare functions you know, old age pensions, you know,
things of this nature, like the public health bureaucracy, you know,
And this is you know, Vogor's point is, this is
why it's a non starter to not treat all economic
analysis as a study of political economy, you know, because
all economic decision making, even in ahenominally lays a fair
uh regime. You know, decisions are made based on sociopolitical
realities with the body politic demands or what's gonna vote
for itself. You know, there's there's economic imperatives where there's
gonna some outlays are necessary, you know, some market hostile outlies.
Out outlays are necessary. You know of a science technological nature,
of a military nature. You know, you don't, you don't,
you don't. You don't build sdi for the hell of it.
You know, you do it when you're in a strategic
paradigm that is totally zero sum that if it resolves
in war, there's gonna be eighty million people dead. And
you know that as human decision makers are increasingly being sidelined,
there's a very real possibility that, you know, a nuclear
war is gonna happen when there's not even any direct
intent to make it happen. This is one example. Okay,
so you find yourself having to dump you know, eight
hundred billion dollars in the I because the alternative is,
you know, possibly the death of your entire country for
a prival purposes. You know, and uh, Finally, there's physical
contingencies that need to be planned for, like whether you're
talking about natural disaster or whether you're talking about, you know,
the state having to service loans that it it took
on to cover contingencies or real crises that emerged, you know,
and the sum of government that and attendant interest grows.
You know, Servicing this debt expenditure requires physical processes and
energies to do so, you know, and that's you know, again,
there's no way to neutralize that or to mitigate that.
People claim the empirical evidence has been mixed. There's this
broad those broad based empirical study undertaken to try and
improve a refet. Wagner's Law was by these two guys
named Alan T. Peacock, which is an awesome name, and
Jack Wiseman that tends to prove the truth of the
matter asserted, and from eighteen ninety one to nineteen fifty
five in the American situation and in the United Kingdom,
they found that Wagner's Law it pretty much described public
expenditure to a t okay. You'll find especially stuff from
the nineties and beyond that claims this is you know,
socialist economics and shifts. But again, I've never seen a
persuasive study that was as thorough and what's complete in
terms of the variables coded as the Peacock and Wiseman study.
So if somebody has one, I'd love to take a
look at it. But I don't think you have one.
But I guess we're coming up in the hour man.
I'm sorry if those two scatter shots. There's a lot
I wanted to get out to sort of lay the foundation.
And I realized I almost didn't say anything on this book,
and that was like, my whole intention was to cover
this book. I promise next time I will cover this correctly,
and we'll devote like half of it to dealing with this,
and then we'll deal with George Terrell and maybe even
say a word about Vabe and stuff. But I promise
I'll move on from this foundational stuff. But like I said,
I I think it was essential that I'm saying the
subject matter, you know what i mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a couple of things, Sombart, you're you initially talked
about Jesus and modern capitalism. One, that book wasn't always controversial.
I mean, the first person who translated into English was
a tumutic scholar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not, it's not it's not particularly it's not
punitive against Jews. It doesn't say, oh, Jews are these
bad people when they're doing these bad things. I mean
it's like I said, ury Slidskin cites it extensively. I mean,
that's the reality. If you don't accept that, if you
don't accept that there's conceptual prejudices built into Jewish political life,
I don't want to tell you there is every population
is like that, you know, I mean, not not like them,
but I mean that that's the reality, is that there's
you know, conceptual prejudice is born of historical experiences. Go ahead,
I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, Another question I had is the the original
the German title is dajudindas Verschaftraslaven, which translated literally means
the Jews and the economic life.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that that translates. The way that's translated approximately
is late capitalism. Why that is I don't know. Germans
a tough language. I can read it passively, but there's
nuances not just of annunciation and stuff of a conceptual najor.
I mean, like like this, like geist geist literally means
ghost spirit, but zeitgeist we're not. We're not We're not
talking about an age spirit or a world spirits. It's
something we're talking about something like American Indians are into
or something like that, doesn't I mean, it's just one example.
But presumably if you're talking about the modern life and
a German, particularly in a German academic sense, you're talking
about the way people live. You're talking about the way
they think. You're talking about the technological features of the
lives they live. You're talking about the way the government
is configured, You're talking about what's important to people. It
encompasses all these things, you know. So in the context
of it, like an American English is very literal language,
like English isn't really versatile. There's ten words forever noun,
but it's also very literal, you know. But in context,
you know, if you say, in German, for example, you know,
the attitude of Jews towards the modern life, You're not
talking about how Jewish people like washing machines and the Internet. Yeah,
Like you're talking about a whole orientation towards this entire
constellation of things that characterize modernity, you know, including late capitalism,
which is a sombart concept. You know, that's the best
way to explain it. I'm far from fluent, I'm semi
fluent in reading it.
Speaker 1: Excellent. All right, Well we'll pick up start talking about
the book the next episode on why there is no
socialism in the United States. And it's not just kidding,
it's so it's so ridiculous that we we've been socially
engineered to think to hear socialism and think it's just
one thing and not ask questions of, oh, why were
people who obviously weren't socialists calling themselves, you know, like
Marxian Marxian conception of socialists. Why why weren't they acting?
You know, why why did Adolf Hitler take power and
actually privatize some public works?
Speaker 2: When why did like, i mean one of the earhard
and milch he he he founded uh luftanz, I mean
among most was a fascinating dude. I mean not just
because it was weird background, it was just interesting. But
he wasn't just a military prodigy, but he was. He
was basically the world's first airline ceo, you know. And
it's like airline CEOs aren't guys who are into state
socialism as we know.
Speaker 1: You know, two plugs real quick on this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, my sub stick, and that's that's the best
place to find me. And also, unlike platforms like x
which I just actually stand by Substack. I think they're
a great platform, but that's where you can find really
good things. It's real Thomas seven seven seven dot substack
dot com. I've got a website. It's number seven h
O Mes seven seven seven dot com. All my social
media and my Instagram can be accessed from those two places,
as long as my YouTube, which I'm gonna try and
do more stuff on. I've been reluctant because I think
they're gonna try and bang me if I get too
comfortable alert. But my homie j Burden and my friend
Derek the Bloody Messing, the scabs guy, they have been
following their example on some content stuff and they both
really like YouTube. But uh, anyway, my social media is
at uh Thomas Sear seven seven seven. That's my government name.
It's th h O M A s c y R
seven seven seven. And uh that's it.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you, so the next time, appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man M