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Socialism, Roast Beef, and Apple Pie Il Mulino - Rivisteweb Miguel Requena Socialism, Roast Beef, and Apple Pie. Werner Sombart on Socialism a Hundred Years Later (doi: 10.2383/31375) Sociologica (ISSN 1971-8853) Fascicolo 2-3, maggio-dicembre 2009 Ente di afferenza: () Copyright c by Societ`aeditrice il Mulino, Bologna. Tutti i diritti sono riservati. Per altre informazioni si veda https://www.rivisteweb.it Licenza d’uso L’articolo `emesso a disposizione dell’utente in licenza per uso esclusivamente privato e personale, senza scopo di lucro e senza fini direttamente o indirettamente commerciali. Salvo quanto espressamente previsto dalla licenza d’uso Rivisteweb, `efatto divieto di riprodurre, trasmettere, distribuire o altrimenti utilizzare l’articolo, per qualsiasi scopo o fine. Tutti i diritti sono riservati. Flashback Socialism, Roast Beef, and Apple Pie Werner Sombart on Socialism a Hundred Years Later by Miguel Requena doi: 10.2383/31375 xIntroduction In 1906 Werner Sombart published a brief essay, in book form, entitled Warum gibt es in den Vereinigten Staaten keinen Sozialismus? [English title: Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?].1 To the great surprise of his readers, the work ended with logical acrobatics leading to an unexpected prediction. After devoting more than two hundred pages to analyzing, in an elegant, penetrating, and convincing way, the reasons why socialism does not exist in the United States, Sombart [2009 (1906), 184] concludes his study as follows: These are roughly the reasons why there is no Socialism in the United States. However, my present opinion is as follows: all the factors that till now have pre- vented the development of Socialism in the United States are about to disappear or to be converted into their opposite, with the result that in the next generation Socialism in America will very probably experience the greatest possible expansion of its appeal. x 1 In fact, the work first appeared under the title of “Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des noredamerikanischen Proletariats” in Archiv für Sozialwissens und Sozialpolitik [1905, 21, pp. 210-36, 308-46, 556-611]. An abbreviated version of the introduction and first section appeared as “Studies of the Historical Development and Evolution of American Proletariat” in International Socialist Review [1905, 6, pp. 129-136, 293-301, 358-67]. Just a year later it would be published as a book in Tübingen by Mohr. Sociologica, 2-3/2009 - Copyright © 2009 by Società editrice il Mulino, Bologna. 1 Requena, Socialism, Roast Beef, and Apple Pie Why is reading a book that ends with such an erroneous prediction still in- teresting more than a hundred years after its publication? It is very clear that fore- knowledge was not one of the author’s virtues,2 despite the fact that some European commentators are now determined to see Barack Obama as a sort of postmodern embodiment, à la américaine, of social democracy. But the fact, certain and stubborn, is that the United States is the only industrial society which has not developed either a powerful socialist party or an important proletarian movement with a class con- science. The social democratic tinge of F.D. Roosevelt’s New Deal [Hofstadter 1972, 308] or the so-called New Left in the sixties, are only exceptions, with few political implications for the formation of a socialist movement, to the great exception: the obstinate absence of socialism in American society. At least three reasons still make reading Sombart’s work on the United States recommendable today. The first is a purely propaedeutic reason: it is a good chance to approach an author who, while not strictly forgotten in sociological thought, is not well-known today. This may be because he only occupies a marginal position in the history of social thought, or because of the theoretical oscillations and incon- gruences that he underwent throughout his career, or simply because he does not stand up well in comparison with his great contemporary and friend, Max Weber. Whatever the reason,3 Sombart continues to be an author who is very representative of his period, with interesting work to his credit, work which, straddling economy, history, and sociology, is worth reviewing. The second reason that reading Sombart’s book is still advisable is a substantive one, the intrinsic – macrosociological, historical and theoretical – interest of the problem he presents: Why is the United States the only developed country where no socialist movement with a relevant political and electoral impact has arisen? The third reason is methodological: Sombart’s work on the socialist movement in the United States contains important teachings, that ought to be emphasized, on the practice of controlled comparison in the social sciences. In this article I will deal, in this order, with these three reasons that invite us to read again Sombart’s essay. Yet Sombart’s famous question not only has an undeniable propaedeutical, substantive or methodological interest, but it has become pertinent again today due to the combination of two extremely current circumstances: the x 2 The only plausible explanation for such a mistaken prediction is that Sombart was then a “convinced Marxist” and didn’t want to deviate from his ideological orthodoxy. His prediction appears – in a sudden, unexpected, and unfounded way – in the penultimate paragraph of his book. In the last paragraph, Sombart adds that he does not have enough space to provide the basis for his forecast but expects to do so later on. It goes without saying that he never did. 3 See Grundmann and Stehr [2001] for an explanation of why Sombart is not part of the core of classical sociology today. It is interesting that Sombart’s name is not included in standard textbooks of the history of sociological theory: see, for example, Ritzer and Goodman [2004] and Turner [2002]. 2 Sociologica, 2-3/2009 global economic crisis that capitalism is undergoing and the recent election in the United States of a new Democrat president, with some views that seem similar to those of European social democracy. In the conclusion I point very briefly to some political implications of Sombart’s book. xThe Author Werner Sombart’s (1863-1941) biography is well known [Lenger 1994]. Suffice it to say here that he was born in Ermsleben (Germany) and that, after studying law and economy in several German and Italian universities, he became one of the representatives of the last generation of the German School of National Economy, an intellectual niche that had become very fertile through its approach to the task of historical analysis, using a perspicacious combination of economic and sociolog- ical perspectives. Together with Max Weber and Edgar Jaffé, he coedited the pres- tigious Archiv für Sozialwissenchft und Sozialpolitik, where some of the most impor- tant works of German sociology in that period appeared. His university career were rather eccentric and his consolidation in academia was late.4 Once established at the university, he turned toward radical nationalism in the last years of his life. However, Sombart’s initial theoretical inspiration was closely linked to Marx- ism, something that distanced him from the idealizing normativism of his teachers’ generation and, in particular, from the group of Gustav von Schmoller. The eulogistic essays that he dedicated to Engels and Marx are characteristic of this first period, as well as a book on the socialist movement, Sozialismus und soziale Bewegund [1896, English title: Socialism and the Social Movement in the 19th Century], which was very successful in its day among the German public. His texts on the United States which are reviewed here also correspond to this first stage, when he concentrated on social- ism and on the proletariat as a social class.5 Following these first works, he wrote a series of studies devoted to the genesis and historical development of capitalism which have proven to have a lasting influ- ence, as well as probably being the best of Sombart’s legacy. Several of the titles – Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben [1911, English title: The Jews and Modern Capital- x 4 He spent a good deal of his life striving to achieve, without much success, a stable position at the university in Germany. It was only at the age of fifty-four, after a long pilgrimage through several institutions of lower academic ranking, that he attained a full professorship at Friedrich-Wilhelms- Universität (later Humboldt University) in Berlin. 5 It is common knowledge that what triggered Sombart’s interest in the United States was the trip he made in 1904, together with Weber and other German scholars, to participate in the Congress of Arts and Sciences at the Universal Exhibition in St. Louis, Missouri. 3 Requena, Socialism, Roast Beef, and Apple Pie ism], Luxus und Kapitalismus [1913, English title: Luxury and Capitalism], Krieg und Kapitalismus [1913], Der Bourgeois: Zur Geistesgeschichte des modernen Wirtschafts- menschen [1913, English title: The Quintessence of Capitalism: A Study of the Histo- ry and Psychology of the Modern Business Man] and Der moderne Kapitalismus: His- torisch-systematische Darstellung des gesamteuropäischen Wirtschaftlebens von seinen Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart [1928, never fully translated into English] – reflect his insistence on the importance of spiritual or psychic factors in economic life and doc- ument in various ways modern capitalism’s genetic links with the Enlightenment’s ideal of rational control over the world. Some of his theses, such as the one concerning the role of the Jews in the origin and development of capitalism, became quite popu- lar in their time, although they were also polemical [Mendes-Flohr 1976; Mosse 1979; Loader 2001]. It is a widely-held view that he prepared many of his most important arguments during this period of his life through dialogue and debate with Weber himself. And although historians have, with the passage of time, questioned numer- ous details of his work, his influence on authors such as Schumpeter and Braudel, for example, must be acknowledged.
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