Sombart, Werner (1863–1941)

Werner Sombart is a German sociologist and historian whose body of work focuses largely on the development of capitalism as specific economic and cultural Western historical formation. His main works are the two volumes of Der Moderne Kapitalismus (1928), Luxury and Capitalism (1913/1967), and Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? (1906/1976), as well as a number of essays on the interfacing of culture and the economy, including works on Jewish culture and economic life and the bourgeois spirit—the influence of which is limited today by the absence of complete translations in the English language. Anticipating the current historical debate, Sombart explained the genesis of capitalism through combining the factors of economic growth relative to production with those relative to consumption. In his view, traces of the development of a new type of society can be seen back to the fourteenth century—above all in Italy and later in Germany, Holland, and England. Here the accumulation of capital saw a marked increase and was no longer based on the feudal economy; [Page 1346]instead, it was based on trade with, and exploitation of, colonies, on the discovery of new reserves of precious metals and money lending. To be sure, the exploitation of the colonies and the needs of armies and international commerce were fundamental to the development of capitalism since they contributed to the total growth of commodities in circulation and the frequency of their exchange. Nevertheless, Sombart is adamant that we cannot simply explain capitalism through geographical enlargement or quantitatively through the market. The development of the colonies and international commerce were in fact initially linked to particular commodities: luxury goods. On close examination, a large part of the goods that make up the growth in demand of early modernity are precisely those goods that appeared on the European market for the first time, nonessential goods that took on new and refined roles that had previously been filled by more simple resources—in particular, spices and drugs, perfumes, dyes, silk and cotton, precious stones, and then, from the late-sixteenth century onward, sugar, coffee, tea, and cocoa.

In Luxury and Capitalism, Sombart maintains that luxury has the capacity to create markets, essentially because it concerns goods of high value that promote and require capitalization and economic rationalization, including a growing availability of credit-providing devices. Thus, it is the “nature” of these commodities that favored capitalist formation: for Sombart, it is above all the characteristics of a part of material culture—those refined goods “of superior class” that go “beyond the necessary” intended as the “common currency” in a given “culture”—that promoted a new capitalist organization within commerce, agriculture, and industry. In fact, the desire for luxury goods occupies an important position among the genetic factors of capitalism, materially as well as culturally. Through stimulating commerce and production, the consumption of luxury goods contributed to the accumulation of capital, which constituted one of the material prerequisites for the development of modern industry. These forms of consumption also signaled the spread of a hedonistic-aesthetic attitude toward objects. According to Sombart, it is above all from the eighteenth century onward that a hedonistic attitude to go shopping developed. Thus, it was those shops selling luxury goods that were the first to arrange themselves as places of elegant entertainment; having reached notable dimensions, they began to differentiate themselves according to the needs they wished to satisfy and to fuel (female toilette, soft furnishings, etc.), promoting the diffusion of fixed price and an increasing depersonalization of the relationship between seller and buyer. In Sombart's view, economics, culture, and politics contribute together to the development of the capitalist way of life. The new models of consumption that stimulate capitalist production thus correspond to a political model characterized by the advent of the absolutist state. The Renaissance courts of Italy had already developed a lifestyle that anticipated modernity and played a crucial role in stimulating the consumption of luxury goods and the refining of tastes. These were followed in the seventeenth century by the absolutist courts, of which the French remains the most important example: thanks also to a new relationship between the sexes, refined material pleasures and their manners became social weapons, genuine place-markers in the courtly game. It is from the court that desires of consumption spread, gradually and then in waves, throughout the rest of society. Initially it was mostly the upper bourgeoisie, who had rapidly accumulated capital through commerce or finance, who represented the new and most important segment of consumption. They wanted to mix with the nobility and used shrewd strategies of marriage, as well as competing with the noble elite not only with their pecuniary power but also through their use of refined goods, to demonstrate their taste and sophistication. In the final analysis, Sombart writes, “The longing for luxury would not have descended to wider strata of Europe within so short a time… if it had not been for… the very great need for luxuries on the part of the nouveaux riches” and if the nobility had not participated in the game of emulation, attempting to “equal the bourgeois parvenus in ostentatious display” (1967, 80–84). Supported and stimulated by the provision of financial services and credit, this social game gave way to processes of hybridization between a high culture of waste and refinement and a bourgeois one of thrift and prudence that is seen to underscore contemporary consumer culture.

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