Bankers drew sharper hatred than manufacturers because their profits seemed parasitical

Evidence

To the small shopkeeper the banker appeared to be the same kind of exploiter as the owner of a big industrial enterprise was to the worker. But while the European workers, from their own experience and a Marxist education in economics, knew that the capitalist filled the double function of exploiting them and giving them the opportunity to produce, the small shopkeeper had found nobody to enlighten him about his social and economic destiny. His predicament was even worse than the worker’s and on the basis of his experience he considered the banker a parasite and usurer whom he had to make his silent partner, even though this banker, in contrast to the manufacturer, had nothing whatsoever to do with his business. It is not difficult to comprehend that a man who put his money solely and directly to the use of begetting more money can be hated more bitterly than the one who gets his profit through a lengthy and involved process of production. Since at that time nobody asked for credit if he could possibly help it—certainly not small tradesmen—bankers looked like the exploiters not of working power and productive capacity, but of misfortune and misery. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 143

Categorization

• XREF: The worker’s Marxist education vs. the shopkeeper’s ideological vacuum is a case study in what Arendt later calls the masses’ susceptibility to ideology; connects to the totalitarian chapter on ideologically uneducated masses.