Anticapitalism and the Emergence of Antisemitism. Stephanie Chasin

the Medieval Jewish Moneylender, the number of Jews who took up usury as a profession was small and, by the late twelfth century, Christians, mainly Italians, had entered into moneylending in significant numbers and, in many places, dominated the profession. That said, even though it is true that most Jews were not financiers, this does not negate the ones who were. It does not erase them from history, nor should they be. Individual Jewish moneylenders, however small a number, were not inconsequential. Some were high profile figures and extremely wealthy and influential; most were small to medium-scale financiers, as Mell documents, who helped people start small businesses, buy their merchandize, supply their daughters with dowries, pay taxes and other bills, and just get by during bad harvests and hard times. To argue their insignificance simply because they were not numerically dominant, as Mell does, suggests an unease with this link between any Jews and capitalism along with a desire to put a great distance between the two. It is not the case that Jewish moneylenders were virtually non-existent. The myth lies in the transference of that professional identity of a relatively small number of Jewish individuals onto Jews collectively. This myth is compounded by others, suggesting that Jews have an inherent ability for finance and that the love of money is an innate trait.³

The association between Jews and capitalism would be meaningless, or harmless, if the capital-based profit economy and its institutions were not widely seen as a vice. It is not enough to try and distance Jews from capitalism as that would not undo this centuries-old stereotype. The myth of the inherent evil of capitalism has to be attacked as well. To its harshest critics, capitalism is exploitative ←viii | ix→and oppressive, and the people who practice it were, and are, naturally motivated by “the greed of gold,” as Sombart described it, rather than the common good. Financiers have long been cast as society’s villains, whatever their religion, and that continues today with groups such as Occupy Wall Street and Extinction. Rebellion. Whether it is a thirteenth-century preacher denouncing usury as uncharitable, Karl Marx’s comment that money is the Jews’ god, the alt-right White Nationalists who chant “The Jews will not replace us,” and disparage free trade and global markets, or an American actor retweeting a cartoon of an arm bearing the Star of David while its hand crushes a multitude of people and has a tag line that reads, “Follow the money,” there is a consistent and enduring connection made between a mythical “vampiric” capitalism and a mythical “vampiric” Jews. Ulrike Meinhof, a member of the anticapitalist terror organization, the Red Army Faction, stated that, “Antisemitism is really a hatred of capitalism.” It might be more correct to say that antisemitism and anticapitalism feed off each other.⁴

In his book The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson notes that debtors have always been more numerous than creditors and financial scandals and crises have always caught people’s attention. So much so, that the myth evolved whereby capitalism was the cause of all financial problems, the source of poverty and financial volatility, instead of prosperity and stability. Financial innovations, such as credit and deposit banks, were imperative for the move from a subsistence existence (which was at the mercy of the weather, a person’s health, or warfare) to a surplus economy destined for the local and overseas markets. Ferguson rightly argues that a democratic state that implements an economy that has banks, bond markets, stock exchanges, and a property-owning populace—all made possible by credit—is generally in better fiscal state than those that do not have these institutions. That is the case whether they are medieval feudal or modern-day economies. It was the creation and evolution of banking that was the necessary first step in the “ascent of money.” As Ferguson writes, poverty is not caused by “rapacious financiers exploiting the poor,” but has “more to do with the lack of financial institutions” and access to credit. And that development of banking began at the moneylender’s bench (banci) in the market square.⁵

To say that it is a myth that capitalism was the source of poverty and all financial problems is not to deny corruption and failures on the part of individuals or groups. The temptation towards greed, a human weakness on which medieval critics based their anti-usury campaigns, led some to extort, defraud, and commit other acts of dishonesty, but no more than in any other business. Capital can, of course, be recklessly or deceitfully employed, but that is human folly and personal corruption. Capital has funded profitable businesses, turned ideas into ←ix | x→inventions, patronized culture, and created a better standard of living for the majority. As William H. Goetzmann claims, the emergence of interest (along with the invention of debt) were “the most significant of all innovations in the history of finance.” Where Ferguson is mistaken, however, is in declaring that financial services were disproportionately provided by members of ethnic or religious minorities, excluded from land or public office and that their success in finance was due to their network of kinship and trust. Not only were Jews not the majority of moneylenders historically, it is yet another myth to claim that all Jewish moneylenders were forced into the profession due to lack of opportunities. Contrary to the idea that they were left with no other livelihood but moneylending, Jews were involved in all kinds of employment, at all economic levels. Nevertheless, this remains a common contention in histories of antisemitism and Jewish history. ⁶

      Despite the ongoing efforts to depict the Jews as “the Other” in the history of antisemitism, Jews were not eternal pariahs, living apart from Western European society. There were brutal attacks in various places at various times and this book documents the consistent efforts to taint Jews as immoral because of their presence in moneylending. Yet, Jews also had business contacts, friendships, and sexual relationships with Christians. They were not a “bloc” standing around, generation after generation, waiting for the next expulsion or violent event, frozen in anticipation. People traded, delivered babies, healed the sick or hastened their death, sold bread, cut diamonds, harvested their grapes, and collected coral, among many other things. And those other things included lending money at the banci in medieval Europe, speculating at the early stock exchanges in Amsterdam and London, or, today, trading on Wall Street.

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      This book is a broad inquiry into why, when, and how this connection emerged in Western Europe and became the most enduring stereotype underpinning antisemitism. How did the attitudes towards a market economy based on capital intersect with, influence, and affect the image of the Jewish moneylender? The fact that only a small number of Jews were ever involved in finance leaves the questions as to why usury was considered corrupt and immoral in the first place and why money/usury/capitalism/banking become bestowed collectively on all Jews? Why and how did this stereotype endure for so long and why didn’t it dissipate when Christians entered the field of usury or over the many centuries ←x | xi→that followed? And were there places or times that it was not as virulent as other regions at other periods?

      To grapple with these questions, the book’s geographical scope begins with Western Europe and ends with the United States and Israel. It is in early twelfth-century Europe that we find a marked upturn of anti-Jewish rhetoric concerning Jews and usury. It is the contention of this book that this negative connection between Jews and money was forged during this time. That is not to say that objections about Jewish moneylenders were not heard in earlier times. But it was the confluence of three major developments during the late medieval period that sparked the idea that the capital-based economy was “Jewish.” First, a small number of Jews held a virtual, but brief, monopoly in moneylending. Second, this came at a time of immense economic change and, for political and economic reasons, the demand for capital greatly increased. Third, this prompted a reaction by those who were against the proliferation of interest-bearing loans, which they regarded as immoral.

      For its critics, usury was not just a bad thing; it was a dreadful sin and harmful to the common good. It went against the idea of caritas (charity) which was a critical issue for members of a Church often attacked as too worldly, because it is uncharitable to profit off your neighbor’s financial distress. It devoured the poor and ruptured society. In contrast, the highest mark of virtue was to own nothing and to give everything freely. The idea that a component of an economic system, and the economic