Jews drew hatred because they carried capitalism into pre-capitalist economies
Evidence
From the time when, in their capacity as merchants, they helped to spread Roman civilization throughout Gentile Europe, they were the representatives—in harmony with their patriarchal religion—of municipal, bourgeois and, finally, industrial conditions. They carried capitalist ways of life to various countries and drew upon themselves the hatred of all who had to suffer under capitalism. For the sake of the economic progress which is now proving their downfall, the Jews were always a thorn in the side of the craftsmen and peasants who were declassed by capitalism. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 132
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to Weber’s Protestant Ethic thesis about who functions as agents of capitalist rationalization, as well as to the general Adorno-Burns lineage. — connects to: Conflating capitalism with Jews made anti-capitalist hostility emotionally anchorable — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 146; Petty-bourgeois resentment of free trade made Jews a ready scapegoat for industrial capitalism; Jews were hated because they were secretly envied for embodying wealth without work — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 698 (+7 more)
- ADDENDUM: This position of Jews as ‘colonizers for progress’ — despised middlemen of capitalist transformation — runs parallel to how the grafting/trees essay treats rootless intermediaries who plant change.
Broader Connections
- Conflating capitalism with Jews made anti-capitalist hostility emotionally anchorable
#expands(0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 146 - Petty bourgeois resentment blamed Jews for the competitive system that displaced them
#corroborates(0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 142 - Petty-bourgeois resentment of free trade made Jews a ready scapegoat for industrial capitalism
#expands(0.80) - Eastern European Jews formed a parasitic seeming middle class that blocked capitalist development
#exemplifies(0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 125 - Jews were hated because they were secretly envied for embodying wealth without work
#expands(0.75) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 698 - Economic precarity of the lower middle class fueled sudden antisemitism
#expands(0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 141