Central one in the modern world. It is one that proceeds by what is called creative destruction. So it is constantly innovating, creating new products, new ways of marketing things, new ways of life. And in the process it is destroying all the ways of life and bofa tracks people and sometimes as a source of resentment. The jews have been infinitely connected with the history of capitalism both in the ways in which people of thought about capitalism. So when it comes to the way in which people think about capitalism one of the interesting themes is that i found that when pre modern thinkers thought about commerce and especially about finesse and moneymaking they often connected it with the issues for reasons that had to do with historical reasons as the role of jews of finance years and as moneylenders and in general as merchants in the middle ages. And then often enough i found when i was writing an earlier book called the mind of the market about capitalism and modern european bonds that these the way in which modern intellectuals was often related to the way they thought about jews. And then there was the fact of when jews because of their commercial background for a number of other factors and other reasons, wind shoes found themselves in situations and the modern world there was a modicum of equality, they tended to do disproportionately well that ends up became interested point because in some cultures do we do better than others . Is sometimes leads to envy and resentment. Especially in the wake of the holocaust, jews themselves while they thought. Themselves about this issue of disproportionate jewish achievement under capitalism tended to doubt downplay it, not wanted to be subject of publicity. In the decades after the holocaust there tended to be lessons. In recent years theyre is a kind of renaissance of historiography. The salience of jews in the history of capitalism and the fact that they disproportionate success is sometimes a source of in the and resentment. So it was regarded by many people as the subjects that only antisemites would want to think about. In fact, of course, it is a subject, the history of capitalism as a central theme in the modern world. Since it is impossible to understand the modern history of the jews without thinking about their links to the history of capitalism, something that scholars and educated people we have to take an interest in. And it leads to a lot of larger questions about achievement under capitalism that we can get into. Host is there a stereotypes of jews in capitalism . Guest there is there are stereotypes. Sometimes positive ones, sometimes negative ones. The association because jews were often connected with merchandising and with finance because of their disproportionate economic success sometimes they were regarded as greedy or materialistic, especially by those who may also have been greedy in materialistic were doing well. The stereotype of the jewish banker exercising secret power around the world which was a stereotype that arose primarily in nine late 19th century your in regard to the rothchild and then became a characteristic one on the european radical right and in some aspects of the american far, far right as well. Host professor, why have jews been extraordinarily successful . Guest well, i should say that they have not always been. On average as i say when they live in society they have a modicum of a quality of legal opportunity. Did not legally discriminate against their entry into various aspects of capitalist life. They have tended to be disproportionately well over time. Especially in the western world, but not just in the western world. Part of that is because of deep historical factors. For a variety of reasons jews in Medieval Europe and in early modern europe tended to be disproportionately involved in commercial sorts of activities even when commerce was the sort of island within a larger noncommercial see. They tended to be involved, especially as merchants, a small number, but the salient number of them were involved in various forms of lending money and then eventually various forms of finance. So one reason is because they came with they came to the modern european societies and American Society with a much greater emersion in commercial culture that people who came from more pleasant backgrounds. That is one factor. Secondly, among jews he tended to have very high levels of female literacy in societies in which most people were still littered. And you had tended to have a high respect for the written word and for systematic learning which came ultimately from the culture of which jews were expected to try to achieve some mastery of, but only a small percentage are in a position to do so. As they say in societies where most people were aliterate, among jews he tended to have high levels of literacy. Because the jews exclude from areas of Economic Life, for most of the middle ages and early modern europe they could not for example of land. Small exceptions. And by and large there were excluded. So while there were jewish artisans that threaten to the High Percentage of the jewish population. And then when they came into Central European society, western european society, American Society eventually the legal barriers against them inclined. There was still the factor of social discrimination new economic opportunities. They tended to be often innovators in terms of marketing. And then the factors, the fact that jews had tended to have more international connection. Especially important to in the early modern world where, for example, in the spanish and portuguese empires and the dutch empires you had groups of jews some of whom had been forced to convert to christianity. They settled in various parts of the iberian coast, the brazilian coast, the caribbean, who charleston in the United States, clustered on an interim. And that formed a source of International Contacts that at some point was important to jewish history. And even as late as the turn of the 20th century, of very interesting circuit of International Circuit of use, mostly of lithuanian origin who had come from the palladium, south africa, some of and has settled in paris and london. And they became a circuit for the sale of ostrich plumes which are very important in fashion at the time. So if you take all those other factors plus the International Connections and you put them all together, it tends to explain in so far as we can disproportionate jewish success. Just one other factor. And that is, they came from a culture in which there was quite a bit of emphasis on what you might call self control and deferred gratification. And again when you put that together with commercial background, higher levels of literacy, dependency to go into new forms of commerce because they were discriminated against in older forms, the tendency to have these International Connections be the orientation to what is worth learning and so on. All this tended to make use disproportionately successful. When jews had been successful have there been instances in history where they have been punished for their success . Absolutely. The attitude of the Larger Society toward this jewish success depended upon, i would say, two main factors. One was the salience of jewish commercial success. When they came to the United States and the 19th and 20th centuries they were functioning in societies you were already highly commercial. So that they were one group of people involved in commerce among others. In other words, they could be successful without being particularly salient or noticeable. But in many areas of safety, in societies where most people were either presence or you had a small layer of landowning aristocrats, where Neither Group was oriented toward commerce and in those societies jews were often the commercial class. And they and in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries with the development of ethnic nationalism, particularly in those areas and the desire of more people from peasant backgrounds and so on to move into these commercial and professional positions that were largely occupied, in those societies jewish success was more salient. They stuck out more. And their success was more resented. That was an important factor in understanding the extent of antisemitism in eastern and central europe. How did stalin used the jews . So one of the chapters of this book has to do with jews as communists. A chapter called jews as radical anti capitalists. The jews had a variety of political responses to capitalism depending upon where they lived and when. A lot of them, especially in western europe and the United States tended to be liberals in the european sense that is oriented toward the days of parties and parties that were commercially oriented and so on a respected civil rights and what have you. But in Eastern Europe in particular and for some generations in the United States as well poor jews coming from Eastern Europe were attracted to socialism. A very small percentage of those were attracted to the most radical and anti democratic form of socialism, namely communism. For a variety of reasons to although very few were communists and very few economists words used, and jews in the early stages of the bolshevik revolution and the communist regime in the soviet union were often found in a very disproportionately founded salient positions in the communist regime partly because they spoke many languages, more better it. So although most were anticommunist there was a small percentage of jews who were salient and communist parties. And that remained the case in russia. Over time stalin increasingly came to use antisemitism as a tool of restoring or regaining his legitimacy. And that was particularly the case actually in Eastern Europe after 1945. In Eastern Europe after 1945 most of the jews had been murdered under the nazi occupation. The small number of jews to remain found themselves under a situation where they were under soviet occupation of occupation by the red army. Some of them joined the communist party in order to try to get back at those people who had assisted in murdering. And so again in the years right after 1945 in Eastern Europe you have an unusual situation where again most jews were not communists in most communist or not choose that you had this Salient Group of jews in positions of and communist parties in hungary, romania, poland and elsewhere. And those parties because of their policies were very much resented by much of the population. In the late 1940s and early 1950s they tried to the also regain their legitimacy or gain some legitimacy by putting their jewish leaders on trial and accusing them of being american spies and so on. And this was something that stalin was very much supportive of. And so at that point stalin and his minions in Eastern Europe used antisemitism in a series of spectacular trials to try to come as i say, bolstered the legitimacy of their regime. Professor, and zachary caravel row that it is hard to imagine a more provocative title that capitalism. What do you think he wrote that . It was not intended to be a provocative title. It was intended to be simply descriptive. I decided to write a small book, capitalism is a big topic. History of the jews is a big topic. As i indicated, there intersection is a key topic of the ministry of capitalism and 70 in the history of the jews. I think it was regarded by some as incendiary precisely because of some of the factors that we were talking about, the identification by antisemites of jews with forms of capitalism that they denigrated. The way in which it was often used by anti capitalists to draw on the history of the antisemitic stereotypes and images in order to stigmatize capitalism. The fact that the these negative stereotypes about the jews and greed and materialism and money still have a kind of afterlife, although a diminishing one in the western world, also i guess it adds to the charges some peoples mind. But my view was people who are radically prejudiced are going to always find facts to bolster their existing presuppositions. People who actually want to get some objective sense of modern history, modern jewish history might very well be interested in this book that, as i say, deals with a large topic in a rather short space and from a variety of angles. Really about capitalism. Thats what i call it. Whats your connection . Well, one of the chapters of the book has to do with a theme that Milton Friedman developed in a lecture of is that i think was called capitalism and the jews. And there in a lecture that was subsequently published declaimed that there was a kind of paradox in regard to the jews and capitalism and that capitalism, he thought, had been good for the jews and they had been disproportionately well. But they have tended to be anti capitalist. And he set out in that essay to answer the question of why that was the case. So in one of my as is in the book i tried to explore both of those issues again. Was it true. It turned out that it was. But often for reasons that Milton Friedman did not really explore. In other words, is assumption seems to beat that all would do well under capitalism under conditions of of equality in the freemarket. And for a variety of historical reasons that is not true. His assertion that shes tended to be anti capitalist, i think, is not true either or rather it takes a small slice of jewish history and makes it larger than it really was. That is to say those jews who came in from the russian empire, the late 19th and early 20th century to the United States and to a lesser degree britain and france, they did have an anticatholic propensity for two reasons. First of all, capitalism was not working very well in the russian empire and certainly was not working well for them. And then when they came to the new world, places like new york they often found themselves working under very long hours, terrible working conditions which led them to organize themselves and sometimes get involved in socialist politics and so on. Their children, the ones to Milton Friedman group with often maintained that anti capitalist orientation through the 1930s, 40s and 50s. In fact, that was a kind of leading stage in the history of jews and their political attitude toward capitalism. As i mentioned, in 19th century europe and the 19th century United States juice had tended to be pro capitalist. They tended to be they the up the way in most european come years. The vote that way in the United States, too. Milton friedman consider anybody is supported the welfare state as tantamount to a socialist. Part of it has to do with the definition. In fact, a leading spokesman for capitalism did emerge in britain and the United States in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. People of jewish backgrounds. So i think that friedman was right about the fact that the jews had done disproportionately well under capitalism. Have not gone very far to explain why that was the case. I think that he overstated the case in regard to the political orientation. What does that mean . Well, it means generally speaking trade. It seems to have its origins from the hebrew word having to do with trade. In 19th century germanspeaking europe it came to be used primarily by non shoes above all by antisemites as a term of stigmatization of commerce in general and jewish commerce in particular. So it is related to the notion of haggling or as they used to say in 1910 to some degree 20thcentury, an english doing, that is to say bargaining someone down in a way that was regarded as negative in someone. And so it was a way of referring then to jews and commerce in a manner that was intended to be stigmatizing. What role did call marks have . Well, marks is a very interesting figure in this regard in that in a couple of ways. Early on in his life he wrote an essay called on the jewish question. And there he basically took all the negative stereotypes connecting jews and commerce and moneymaking from the middle ages and said nowadays the problem is not the jews and their relationship to commerce and capitalism. The problem is that now all of us are engaged in capitalism. And so it took all the negative characterizations about commerce and finance that have been connected to the notion of usury in the middle ages and applied it to capitalism as such. So one of marxs key notions thereafter was the notion of the labor theory and value which essentially maintain that all real economic value came from labor by which he meant above all physical labor. What we would call bluecollar workers are what he called the proletariat. The role of people who manage our labour or created companies or root invested in companies or who innovated to find new products, new markets and so on, all those elements of capitalism have to do more with using ones mind than using ones body. All of those are regarded as essentially superfluous as not adding real value. And so march is really important in the store because it takes a lot of medieval stereotypes about money and about the lending of money that were connected with the notion of user and part of that notion was that people who lend money were essentially parasitic, there were not really doing anything productive. Which is highly mistaken. It overlooks low whole role of the mind and Economic Life. He took all the stereotypes and expanded them from the plight of the jews to applying to capitalism as such. What has been the reaction of a Catholic University professor writing about capitalism and the jews . I dont think that the fact that i teach at Catholic University has been a major factor. In fact, i have been here for much of my professional life and have been very productive year. I am in fact not catholic. I am jewish. That may have played some role in it, but on all i think people have responded to the arguments of the book more than where i teach. How long have you been writing about capitalism . On and off for a lot of my professional life. I guess i started writing about it in the early 1980s sorry, in the later 1980s. I worked for many years on a book called the mind and the market, capitalism and modern european thought which has to do with our modern european intellectuals from voltaire in the 18thcentury through Herbert Marcuse and Frederick Hayek in the 20th century taught about capitalism and its cultural ramifications. While that ultimately cannot in 2003, while i was working on that book i published another smaller book on adam smith as a social and political thinker. Adam smith and his time and hours designing the decent society. And then after mind in the market cannot i worked in these more jewish oriented themes. I continue to think about and right about the history of capitalism, the march issue of the Journal Foreign Affairs in the 2013, a piece called capitalism and inequality, what the right and the left get wrong which explore some of the longterm themes of the history of capitalism. Im still working on it. It is a big topic. Is there a date certain when it was founded . No. In fact, one of the interesting fallacys i think in writing the history of capitalism, one that has now been dispelled is precisely this notion of what the was a starting point. The beginning of the 20th century there was a big debate in germany between mocks favre and vendor some bark about to was most responsible for the origins of capitalism. Pyridine protestants and the way that there were five or was it juice . Actually, its more accurate to think about capitalism as an extension of a process that has been going on for a very long time. The trade is been going on for as far back as we know. For a lot of the middle ages, especially from what we call the high middle ages on there was a substantial amount of commerce in europe. It was confined to an urban violence within a larger agricultural seed. Certainly capitalism picked up a lot after about 1600. And since then it has extended in the geographical range, expanded in the areas of life that it affects. So first it was primarily about trading things. Later on and some people consider this the defining element of capitalism, it moved into the realm of production. That is to say to capitalism through wage labor. Capitalism is a protean process that has gone through many stages. I think it is hard to find the point where it absolutely begins. One can see as an expansion into more and more areas of growth and life. That is one of the themes that interest me exploring in a forthcoming book. The many ramifications of capitalism and its relationship to state and the changing shape and function of the family and its relationship to culture and the way in which people define themselves through what is produced in a capitalist process. So the process has many ramifications. We have talked about jews. You have mentioned the protestants and terrigenous. Is there a connection between capitalism and religion . There are lots of connections, but they are hard to pin down. That is to say, it is clear that and some times and places the actual doctrinal attitude of religions toward various elements of Economic Life to play no role in the extent to which they developed in a capitalist direction are not. So the prohibition on usury in medieval catholicism, for example, probably did play a role in creating the space for others, and this case and a good part juice to play april, merrill. It has been argued by some scholars attitudes toward the use very in the fear of lending money, the stigmatization of lending money had a returning influence on some elements of muslim economic development. Im not going with that theory necessarily, but it is a possibility. It is important to keep in mind that there is also a big gap between what religious doctrine says people ought to be doing and what they actually do. So there are such links, but they are difficult to pin down. This interesting theory that what was important, it is true. Cal tennis and early modern europe and up to serve in the 19th century were disproportionately successful in capitalist Economic Activity in many parts of europe in the new world. That had very little to do with the actual doctrine of calvin and cavernous theologians about money and money making it as much more to do with the kind of mentality that calvinism created in which people had to constantly sort of methodically think about controlling their lives in which they didnt want to oversee extend it tended to be highly conducive to a protestant economic success and especially calvin is the economic success. It is true. He looked at europe it is striking that protestant countries and pros and portions of countries that were partly protestant or catholic, protestant portions tended to be much more developed in a capitalist way which faded over time. One can often find such connections between religion and culture more generally and levels of economic achievement. Youre watching book tv 91. We are talking with jerry miller, professor here at Catholic University. Here is his most recent book. Visit booktv. Org to watch any of the programs you see here online. You can also share anything uc easily by clicking share and selecting the format. Book tv streams live on line for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. Booktv. Org. Book tv has covered several books on modern russian and u. S. Russian relations. In light of the current conflict between russia and ukraine and the u. S. Involvement in the situation book tv presents portions of author talks on russian leaders and foreign