The Riddle of the Jew's Success

by Theodor Fritsch

  The despot of earlier times invariably took the part of his bondmen, and protected them against dangers from without, because their preservation and his own economic interest were inseparable. The lender of money does not recognise this personal concern for the welfare of those who pay him interest; he chases them ruthlessly from hearth and home when they are no longer able to pay him tribute. He also enjoys the advantage that the unpledged portion of his debtor’s property falls, in this manner, into his clutches as well.

  Sometimes he acquires, under a forced sale, the entire possessions of his debtor in satisfaction of his claim, and thereby gains that part of the property, which had not yet been pledged. He then introduces a fresh “interest-slave” into the property, and proceeds to treat the same, who perhaps has increased the value of the property by his personal energy, in precisely the same manner should he fall into arrears.

  Between the “ interest-master” and the “interest-slave” all human relations have ceased; the connection between the two has become purely mechanical; it has become unhuman and soulless. On the other hand, the activity of the receiver of interest does not call for the slightest intellectual or physical exertion.

  [Page 180] The knight of olden times protected his bondmen with spear and shield against their foes; the lord of capital has divested himself of all such responsibilities. The accumulation of capital also has become a purely mechanical process. Interest and capital accumulate in accordance with the purely mechanical law of mass-attraction — an absolutely imbecile proceeding devoid of any organic sense. Sombart says:

  “ With regard to the lending of money, economic activity as such has lost all meaning; the occupation of lending money has ceased to be a sensible activity of either mind or body.”

  There is one, and only one object: the material result i.e., the acquisition of fresh capital, and therewith the extension of the power of the lender of the money.

  In this manner loan-capital gains power over other men, and has forced itself into a dominating position, which is founded neither on physical, nor on intellectual, nor on moral superiority. This position depends entirely upon a fictitious power, and one which is devoid of any human element, namely the conception or notion of capital. It is enabled by means of eternal interest, extending into immeasurable time, to make foreign labour subject to itself, and to overpower and crush all spiritual and moral effort. The formation of capital out of interest is something automatic and spiritless, for it can be consummated just as well in the hands of an idiot as in the hands of a being destitute of all morality — simply by a fiction, by a false economic view.

  “ The possibility of earning money without any personal exertion by an economic transaction, makes its first distinct appearance in the lending of money. The possibility also, of getting strangers to work for one without physical compulsion, is immediately apparent.”

  Thus writes Sombart on page 223; it seems to us, however, that the “scooping-in” of interest is scarcely worthy of the name of “economic transaction.”

  After such illuminating reflections, it seems very extraordinary to us, that it is precisely in the capitalistic Jewish press where a bitter hatred is unceasingly fomented against the domination of olden times, and against anything which refers to, or recalls the same. Feudaldomination, Knighthood, Nobility are mediaeval ideas, and as such are exposed to incessant attacks from the so-called “liberal” press.

  [Page 181] With what right and for what purpose? Simply with the object of not allowing the infatuated population, who are ignorant of history, to wake up to the fact that they are languishing and wasting away under new tyrants, the interest-despots, who set to work in a far more selfish and brutal manner than was ever the case even with the most ruthless Feudal-Lord of the Middle Ages.

  [Page 182]

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  XIII.

  Business and Religion.

  Sombart speaks mockingly of the “ fearful maxims” which Pfefferkorn, Eisenmenger, Rohling, Dr. Justus and others have culled from the religious books of the Jews. It would have been a good thing if he had submitted a sample of these “horrors” to his readers, for, often as these “maxims” have been examined by other conscientious scholars, they — the maxims — have invariably retained the same aspects. And, when the explanatory artifices of the Jews are brought into play, according to the receipt given in chapter V, one is in a position to understand that the Hebrew can interpret entirely different, and far worse meanings out of those doctrines, than the conscientious Christian translator is capable of. The same Sombart, who reported to us some time back, how, owing to the Talmud, the entire Jewish spiritual world had declined into impotence, and how every minute point, every letter, every word had its own important meaning, goes so far as to say light-heartedly a few pages further on:

  “naturally in the course of so many centuries these particular doctrines have altered entirely in meaning.” This is untrue. All that is correct is, that in the Talmud with its commentaries, the most divergent opinions of the Rabbis find utterance, and that the doctrines and expositions contained therein, frequently contradict one another; that, however, is only equivalent to saying that it is open to every faithful Jew to accept as authentic whatever doctrine and exposition may best suit his purpose for the time being. Thus, when one passage reads: “you must not lie to, deceive, or rob the Goi”, and another Rabbi says: “under circumstances you may do so”, more latitude is allowed to the conscience of the Jew who believes in his Talmud. He can act either in this way, or in that, and will still find himself in agreement with the law, will still remain a pious and orthodox Jew.

  [Page 183] Out of the mass of inconsistencies and contradictions contained in the Rabbinical writings, arises that cheap form of diversion which the Rabbis have always carried on at the expense of those who do not happen to be Jews. If anyone calls attention to a passage in the Talmud, which states: You may do the Goi an injury, the Rabbi can at once turn up another place where it says: You must not do this. The morality of the Talmud is like a conjurer’s box with a false bottom, from which the moral and the immoral can be produced according to wish. It is therefore, trifling on the part of Sombart when, referring to the serious scientific study which Christian Scholars have made of the Talmud, to speak of the:

  “ downright silly game, which the Anti-Semites and their Christian or Jewish opponents have been playing ever since the recollection of man”.

  The only question is, which side is playing a silly game. Sombart himself is engaged in a game of harassing and mystifying when he says with reference to these matters:

  “ So far as the religious writings are read by the laity themselves, it seems to me essential that, generally speaking, a settled opinion should be expressed with regard to any particular question. It is a matter of indifference if, at the same time, the contrary opinion is also represented; for the devout man, who has been edified by these writings, is content to accept the view which coincides with his own interests, so that he is thereby in a better position to defend the same.”

  According to this logic one might well believe that Sombart had also attended the Talmudic School, for this is a genuine specimen of the Rabbinical expression of opinion: one particular view or manner of understanding suffices if it exactly suits the reader! — capital. But if there happen to be two entirely opposite opinions, the devout man has the opportunity of selecting whichever one pleases him best. And one is bound to admit this is a very empty kind of morality.

  Sombart adds:

  “since everything, in this case, is divine revelation, one passage is just as valuable as another.”

  Quite correct! here we have the morality with the double bottom — openly defended by a scholar who does not desire to be a Jew!

  [Page 184] The Rabbinical writings, which most certainly have been written by the most intellectual amongst the Jewish people, actually prove that, amongst the Jews, the feeling for true morality, for the ethical c
onsciousness, is entirely wanting.

  There is no good and evil for them; everything is gauged by momentary advantage. A naive ponderer, like Friedrich Nietzsche, saw with admiration in all this, a “higher form of morality,” and felt tempted to write his “Jenseits von Gut und B-se” (“The other side of Good and Evil”). He had no conception how his action smoothed and prepared the way for unmoral Jewdom. There is no “other side” to good and evil for constructive and productive people, for nations of real culture; these require stern standards and accurate balances to determine what is constructive and what is destructive, and to show what preserves and what demolishes. It is only the Hebrew, who does not construct anything, who can allow himself the luxury of an “other side to Good and Evil.”

  Sombart is more honest when he confesses: “ I find in the Jewish Religion the same leading ideas as those which characterize capitalism: I see that the former is filled with the same spirit as the latter.”

  In reality, the conscienceless predatory spirit, which distinguishes modern Capitalism in its worst form — Mammonism — fulfils also the Talmudic Rabbinical doctrine. One must be grateful to Sombart for this admission. He proceeds to say — and this statement must also be approved on account of its honesty — that this religion:

  “ has not arisen from an irresistible impulse, nor from the deep fervour of the heart of those, whose souls have been mutilated, nor from the religious ecstasy of adoring spirits, but from a premeditated plan like a carefully-considered proposition, resembling a diplomatic problem.”

  He designates it as a work of the understanding, calculated to break up and enslave the whole natural world. How strangely does this opinion correspond with the perception of the derided Anti-Semites, who have been saying the same for decades!

  [Page 185] Undoubtedly the Jewish doctrine arises from the understanding, warped with vanity, which has lost all touch with the fundamental laws of natural growth or development, and would like to convert life, devoid now of soul and reason, into a sum of arithmetic. The word, Rationalism, which one would like to apply to this particular frame of mind and this mode of regarding life, is not appropriate here. Ratio always means reason, i.e., thought that is in harmony with natural laws; reason is not merely understanding, but is, at all events, understanding united to instinct or feeling, being endowed with a keen sensibility as to the essential nature of things.

  Mere understanding is simply arithmetic, without instinct, without feeling. And the Jewish mode of thinking must be placed in this category. If, according to the popular belief, the devil is to be regarded as stupid, then this points out very pertinently the purely intellectual nature of the calculation and scheming which arise out of Evil. For this calculation, devoid of instinct, invariably ends by deceiving itself for the simple reason that no allowance having been made for Nature, the calculation rests on a false basis. When Sombart says: “Rationalism is the principal trait of Judaism just as it is of Capitalism,” he means the mere mechanism of the understanding — soulless calculation. And when he goes on to say: “the Jewish religion does not recognise anything of a mystic nature,” he might have said still more correctly that it did not recognise idealism, nor true morality, nor anything ethical. When he further maintains that the ancient religions were always ready to attribute any deed, which aroused a sense of shame or remorse, to the Divinity, it is the Jewish doctrine alone that entirely justifies the accusation.

  Already, in the time referred to by the Old Testament, all kinds of disgraceful deeds, perpetrated by the people of Judah against other nations, were undertaken, always ostensibly at the bidding of their God Jahwe or Jehovah; and the same diversion is continued in the Talmud. Jahwe not only approves of all manner of evil things, but he himself, as personification of the Jewish entity, tells lies and deceives.

  [Page 186] The philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach, has already designated the socalled Jewish religion as nothing more than a business contract between Judah and its God. Nothing is to be found in these laws and doctrines, which does not hint at some material benefit for the children of Israel. Jahwe demands obedience from his people, and promises them in return: riches and long life.

  “ Utilitarianism profit — is the predominant principle of Jewdom” says Feuerbach. “The Jews have retained their peculiarity up to the present day: their deity is the most practical principle in the world: egoism, and egoism in the form of religion.” Ernest Renan says the same thing (Hist. des lang. sém.).

  Sombart is no different with reference to Jewish doctrine: “ There is no kind of compact or partnership between God and man, which is not consummated in the form that man performs something that is agreeable to God, and is rewarded by God correspondingly.”

  But even Jahwe does not do anything for his chosen people except for cash down. He is no God of the self-sacrificing love, but is an outand-out business man like the Jew himself; and thus, throughout the whole Jewish religion, there is no higher moral guiding star. There is nothing to raise man above himself, no unselfish sacrifice, no inspiration for ideals. Always only:

  “ A constant weighing-up and comparison of the advantage or disadvantage, which any action or omission to act may entail, a most complicated kind of book-keeping in order to keep the debit side of each individual’s account in order.”

  Such is Jewish piety according to Sombart. And, just as according to the Jewish mode of thinking, everything resolves itself into action and reaction, into payment and acquisition, so, in the so-called Jewish religion, is the acquisition of money regarded as the supreme and sole object of life. The Jew introduces the huckster’s spirit even into his divine services, and Sombart reports that these ceremonies have, in many cases, developed into nothing less than formal auctions. Thus, for example, the official posts of the Thora in the Synagogue are sold by auction to the highest bidders (Sombart page 249).

  [Page 187] He also confirms that the Rabbis were, for the most part, prominent business people, (compare also page 73) and therefore we are bound to acquiesce when he hints that the Jewish religious system has greatly assisted the capitalistic career of Jewdom. In other words, the socalled Jewish religion is nothing else than the wrapping-up of sharp business practices in a religious garment.

  A nation certainly has nothing to be proud of in having invented and retained in favour, even up to the present day, a code of morals which in truth is devoid of all morality. But why should not the Hebrew cling tenaciously to this traditional doctrine; for, thanks to its help, success is on his side! Why should he not cherish his Jahwe, who has been such an excellent adviser to him in all business matters? It is a fatal weakness of the other nations that, up till now, they have not been able to perceive what their real relations to the Jews are, and have not been able to discover the ways and means by which the Jews enrich themselves. So the Jew still retains the fantasy that not only is his intelligence of a higher quality than that of other men, but that his religion is also superior to theirs. He will only become sober-minded when the other nations at last settle accounts with him, and when he discovers that the accountant, Jahwe, unmasked and hurled from his throne, is no longer in a position to help him.

  * * * Indeed, there cannot be any more striking contrast than that presented by the intense, unearthly idealism of Christ, which disregards the material world, and the rabbinical spirit which is directed entirely towards material advantage and earthly enjoyment. Sombart says:

  “ In this respect the Jews stand in the most striking contrast to the Christians, whose religion has endeavoured to its utmost to embitter all joy in this world. Just as often as riches are praised in the Old Testament, are they cursed, and poverty extolled, in the New Testament.”

  It is therefore illuminating, why the devout Christian and the pious Jew play such very unequal parts in the acquisitive life.

  [Page 188] The Christian seeks to acquire in order to gain his living; the Jew is desirous of heaping up riches in order to control and to enjoy. And, at this juncture, the question aris
es: Has not the unworldly religion of the Christians perhaps been the unconscious agent to fasten the golden fetters of Jewdom on the Aryan nations? — But while the views taken of life, and the moral obligations of the Aryan nations have, in the course of time, altered and become freer and more humane, the same cannot be said of Jewdom. Its law remains rigid and unchangeable up to the present day: in the course of 3,000 years Jewdom cannot record any moral advance. What stands written, stands written, and is just as valid today as on the first day, when, according to the legend, it was dictated directly by Jahwe to Moses on the summit of Mount Sinai. Jewish law is built up on a faith of sheer and literal acceptation, with exclusion of all common sense and of all unfettered judgement. It reduces its adherents to dumb slaves. Jewdom is, in reality, the religion of servility.

  Whenever the fable is repeated that the Jews were our instructors in moral and religious matters, and presented us, as it were, with a religion, the repetition discloses either complete ignorance of the subject, or a deliberate perversion of facts.

  The people of Judah were never moral and pious in our sense of these words; they do not possess any faculty of perception in this respect. And whoever regards the blind subservience of the Hebrew to literalness as the highest degree of piety, is incapable of recognising the spiritual and moral nature of the genuine man. The really religious man is he, who untiringly searches for the deepest and most intimate associations between natural and moral occurrences, who is constantly extending his knowledge, who surveys and judges of his own actions according to their effect, and who does not cling blindly and incapable of judgement to mere literal forms. Lagarde says appositely: “A religion only lives as long as it is cultivated.”

  [Page 189] In reality it is only the constant striving for moral perfection and the constant seeking for and deepening of moral insight, which form the essence of true religiousness. Where these are wanting, there is no religion; and they are wanting in Jewdom. The slave to literalness, who conforms to the timeworn doctrine without passing any criticism, and who, at the best, endeavours to thread a way by means of cowardly subtlety between the various precepts of the same, is wanting in nothing so much as in religious consciousness. And thus, from this standpoint, the Jewish doctrine cannot lay any claim to the name of religion.