Technological change and economic development in Werner Sombart's concept of economic
system
Paper presented to the 13th Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of
Economic Thought, Thessaloniki, April 23-26, 2009
Günther Chaloupek, Austrian Chamber of Labour, Vienna
FIRST DRAFT
1. Werner Sombart as pioneer of the economics of technological change
Werner Sombart (1863-1941) deserves credit for being the first economist who analyzed the role
of technological change in long term economic development. (1)
This, however, does not imply that before Sombart there was no awareness or understanding of
the basic significance of technology for the production of goods and services in the perception of
men and in the social sciences. Quite to the contrary, one of the principal characteristics of the
nineteenth century is the general belief that human civilization had made substantial progress
through advances in technology which were without historical precedent; that a continuous
increase of material well being and culture had been made possible by a constant stream of
inventions and improvements in production processes. And yet, this fundamental role of
technology and its progressive development is very little reflected in the economic thought of the
nineteenth century.
Of course, there is Karl Marx who assigned an important role to the development of new
technologies as principal means of capitalist entrepreneurs to achieve extra profits, especially in
the chapter on machinery and big industry in Das Kapital, Vol. 1. More fundamental still is the
role of technological change in the interplay of "Produktivkräfte" and "Produktionsverhältnisse"
(productive forces and relationships of production) which serves Marx as a general conceptual
scheme for the explanation of history. If Marx often touched upon the crucial importance of
technological change in his theory of capitalism, he did not, however, systematically analyze its
impact on the evolution of this system.
During the nineteenth century, the analysis of the development of technology was largely left to
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engineers, technicians and natural scientists. Even in that context, the history of technology was
not an academic subject of its own right. The substantial work that the history of technology
produced during the second half of the nineteenth century was the achievement of "hobby
historians": of engineers, professors of technological sciences, occasionally also of natural
scientists (Hausen and Rürup 1975, pp. 11ff). Contributions were also made by authors who
addressed a wider circle of readers in a more popular style. As a consequence, the focus on all
these contributions on the history of technological change was on the technical-practical side of
the matter - engineers writing for engineers, and occasionally on the more trivial economic results
of technical advances.
For Sombart, both sources, i.e. the writings of Karl Marx and the literature on the history of
technology, were indispensable elements for his investigations into the role of technological
change for the evolution of capitalism. Even after his sharply anti-socialist book "Der
proletarische Sozialismus" (Sombart 1924) Sombart held Marx in high esteem as social scientist.
Marx not only deserved full credit for having identified "capitalism" as an economic system, but
also for his analysis of its functioning, leaving for Sombart only the task to "speak the modest last
word" on that system (Sombart 1927, p. XXII).
In formulating his concept of "economic system" in general terms, Sombart took two elements
from Marx: "form", i.e. regulation and organization, resembles Marx's relationships of
production, "technology" has its equivalent in Marx's forces of production. However, Sombart
rejected Marx's epistemological realism, as he followed the traditions of German
"Geisteswissenschaften". Hence, he added "spirit", i.e. the "objective" ideas that provide the
framework for the beliefs and motives underlying social actions of men.
An "economic system" represents the "spiritual unity of the mode of an economy which is (1.)
dominated by a specific economic spirit, (2.) which has a specific order and organization, and (3.)
which applies a specific technology" (Sombart 1927/2002, p. 289). With respect to technology,
Sombart adds three basic general dimensions of qualification along which technologies can be
classified: "I. empirical - scientific; II. stationary - revolutionary; III. organic - non-organic
(mechanical-anorganic)" (ibidem, p. 299). These qualifications are not deduced by logicalD:\533582121.docGchaloup
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analytical methods, but they are generalizations equally based on historical investigation and
theoretical concepts - as a reflection of Sombarts methodological approach of theoretical
historicism, i. e. a synthesis between historical empiricism and theoretical economics.
In the first two volumes of Der moderne Kapitalismus, Sombart applies a slightly different
scheme for the classification of technologies. He uses only two dimensions of qualification:
empirical - scientific, organic - inorganic. Empirical technologies are the subdivided into
"empirical-traditionalist", which appears to be the equivalent of stationary, and "empiricalrationalistic", which corresponds to "revolutionary" (Sombart 1916-Vol. I, p. 479).
Sombart makes it clear from the outset that spirit is the element that shapes and ensures the unity
of a system. In that sense, order and technology breathe the spirit of the system. "It is the basic
idea of this work (Der moderne Kapitalismus), that a different economic mind prevails at
different times, and that it is spirit, which gives itself the adequate form and thereby creates the
economic organization" (Sombart 1916-Vol. I, p. 25). This does not mean, however, that spirit is
the sole determinant of historical evolution. As will be shown by the following, there is a
relationship of mutual interdependency between the three basic dimensions of a system, in which
at certain points any one of them can have the decisive influence.
2. Technology in the pre-capitalist system and in the transition period ("Frühkapitalismus")
Under the heading "non-capitalist systems" Sombart (1925/2002, p. 300ff) lists several types of
organizations of agricultural production and the "crafts system", i.e. the economy of medieval
cities organized in crafts and trades. The above-mentioned qualifications of technology are well
suited to elaborate the essential characteristics of the technology of the crafts system that
distinguish it from the technology used in the system of capitalism.
Sombart (1916-Vol. I, pp 200ff) characterizes the technology of the crafts system as "empiricalorganic". Technical skills are based on personal knowledge of the craftsman, of the artisan, who
has been taught his art by an other master. Improvements are only made possible through
practical experience. Knowledge is transferred from person to person through the apprenticeship
system. Rules of secrecy prevent knowledge which is specific of a certain trade from becoming
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disclosed to wider circles of the population. Except for metals only organic materials are used,
the transformation of materials is achieved mostly through manual work, with the occasional
support from animals, water power or wind power. It is not explicitly mentioned by Sombart at
this point, but it can be inferred from spirit and form of the crafts system that its technology is
stationary. This is ensured by the solidaristic spirit that prevails in the craft guilds, as well as by
the rules of organization to which its members must comply. The corporate order provides
detailed regulations for all parts of production and sale of goods, for the materials used as well as
for quality and price of the product; it includes also limits for the size of establishments and
sometimes even on the quantity of output. (ibidem, pp. 188ff)
The Reformation and the discovery and exploration of new continents mark the beginning of a
new age shaped by a new spirit which strives for transcending traditional limits of knowledge and
power. In this "Faustian spirit", as Sombart calls it (ibidem, p. 327) (2), men embark on many
kinds of new enterprises, in the sciences and arts as well as in travelling to unknown destinations,
and also on new economic ventures. In the economic sphere, the new spirit "breaks the barriers of
peaceful, static, feudal economy orientated at provision for needs ("Bedarfsdeckungswirtschaft")
and pushes men into the whirlwind of the economy of acquisition ("Erwerbswirtschaft")"
(ibidem, p. 328). The entrepreneur emerges as the powerful agent of change from solidarism to
individualism, from provision for needs to production for profit.
However, it takes more than two centuries for the new spirit and for the new forms of enterprise
to become the prevailing style of goods production, trade and finance. Traditional forms of
economy and habits of mind continue to dominate many areas of economic life, and even in the
fully developed system of capitalism of the nineteenth century traditional forms manage to
survive, e.g. in certain handicrafts.
In the area of technology change is slow, so that by mid eighteenth century Sombart finds that
technology is still predominantly empirical and organic. If, nonetheless, the new spirit has
brought some dynamic movement into technology, this has been due to the gradual displacement
of the previous traditional approach by a "rationalist" approach (ibidem, p. 479) - (mildly)
"revolutionary" in the terminology of Sombart's final scheme of classification. In the transition
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period, "technology is still lacking an exact scientific foundation" (ibidem, p. 466) - Leonardo da
Vinci is an untypical, exceptional case in this respect. But the drive for new inventions of various
kinds takes hold of the minds of men interested in new things, and this drive is increasingly
encouraged by project makers, wealthy noblemen, later even by state governments. Inventions
are made by experimental methods, by trial and error; many are the unintended by-product of
alchemistic experiments.
What is behind these accelerating technical change is not only "the determinate will for technical
progress" (ibidem, p. 475), but also an intensifying desire for money wealth (alchemy, mining),
and an increasing demand for weapons. During the early period of the modern age, the size of
armed forces increased steadily. The armies required new weapons with more power and greater
precision, from them originated a mass demand for supply of food and clothing.
Traditional orientations continued to shape major parts of the economic order for centuries. In
particular, the restrictions on entrepreneurial activity imposed by guild orders were maintained
for the urban handicrafts. This entailed severe impediments for the introduction of new
technologies. The prohibition of the automatic ribbon loom in the Low Countries and in the
German Reich (1685, ibidem pp. 496ff) and the barriers against the use of cotton are the most
prominent examples for this hostile attitude towards technical change.
Due to this and other reasons, technical progress was comparatively slow until the beginning of
the nineteenth century. The achievements in improvement of transport techniques and production
processes remained rather modest due to both the empirical and the organic nature of
technologies. In the iron industry, e.g., the reliance on charcoal prevented the full exploitation of
productivity increases made in the stages of melting and processing. (Sombart 1916-Vol. II, p.
1126ff)
In the second half of the eighteenth century the European economy's march towards capitalism is
threatened to come to halt due to the organic nature of its technology. (ibidem, pp. 1137ff) Wood,
which was by far the most important source of energy, became increasingly scarce as a
consequence of population growth and of increasing demand for industrial production (charcoal
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for iron production, material for construction of machinery and transport equipment, etc.).
Various kinds of regulations were enacted by governments to counter the shortage which could
finally be overcome by opening up a new source of energy supply: coal, which Sombart
categorizes as "inorganic" in the context of technology.
3. The acceleration of technological change in the era of "high capitalism" ("Hochkapitalismus")
In the era of fully developed capitalism technology becomes the main driving force by changing
its orientation from empirical to scientific, from organic to inorganic, and from empiricalrationalistic (halfway between traditional and revolutionary) to revolutionary.
Major break-throughs in the sciences of physics (mechanics especially), chemistry and in the
theory of electricity form the basis of the scientific development of new technologies, instead of
their improvement by trial and error (Sombart 1927, pp. 78ff). Technical knowledge becomes
fully "objectivised", knowledge about the functioning of production processes is based on laws of
nature and is formally taught at universities and polytechnic institutes (ibidem, p. 81). Natural
sciences and modern technology are "twin sisters" (p. 78), which mutually benefit from each
other. The horizon of action of activities of capitalist entrepreneurs is pushed outward
progressively through invention of new products and processes, their development and further
improvement (p. 34).
The capitalist system derives its energy for unlimited expansion from the entrepreneur's drive for
extraprofit and from the dynamics of technological change. "Because every entrepreneur hopes to
gain an edge and thus an extraprofit over his competitor through improvements of the production
process or of the organization of production, his efforts and endeavours are directed towards
permanent innovation, with his entrepreneurial spirits always under utmost possible tension. In
this drive for extraprofit ... the innermost secret of the utmost dynamic orientation of 'high
capitalism' is embedded"(ibid., p 35). Moreover, inventive activities are promoted by the state
through various means; remaining regulatory impediments for innovations are abolished.
The boundary from the side of resources that for some time seemed to choke off the expansive
drive of capitalism is lifted through the switch from organic to non-organic technologies: from
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wood to coal and iron, steam power for animal power, synthetic for natural fertilizer, etc.
(ibidem, p. 97ff) "Until the end of the early capitalist period mankind had lived from the income
which accrued to it every year in the form of solar energy and from the effects of the latter on the
growth of plants and trees...And now mankind had at its disposal treasures from the interior of the
earth that had been collected from solar energies over millions of years, which mankind has been
enabled to consume (in addition to the annual income) through the inventions of new
technology"(ibidem, p. 122). There were other advantages of inorganic materials, such as greater
precision, reliability and dependability.
So much for the broad lines of Sombarts analysis of the significance of technological change in
the development of capitalism. Some of the more specific aspects mentioned in Vol. III of Der
moderne Kapitalismus will be discussed in section 5.
4. Technology in the era of "Spätkapitalismus" ("late capitalism")
Sombart was convinced that the ascent of capitalism had reached its high point before World War
I. In the following period of gradual decline which he called "Spätkapitalismus", it is again spirit
that is the determinant factor.(3) For development of capitalism as a system 'objectivization' ('reification', for the German word 'Versachlichung' which is difficult to translate in the particular
meaning Sombart assigns to it) and 'rationalization' of all kinds of social relationships are
fundamental characteristics. Relationships of all kinds increasingly take on abstract,
institutionalized forms which exist independently of men acting within these forms (Sombart
1916-Vol. II, pp. 1076 sseq.). This 'mechanization of society', as Sombart also calls it, is at the
same time a powerful driving force of economic development but also of cultural decline.
Sombart's cultural pessimism is only one example of this attitude which dominates human
sciences in Germany before and after the First World War.
What Schumpeter later called "automatization" is essentially the same process for which Sombart
has developed his theory of "Versachlichung" (reification) or "Vergeistung" of modern
enterprise. As regards the evolution of relationships between different enterprises, Sombart sees
two main long term trends at work: there is an increasing specialization in the production of
goods and services while at the same time in many areas there is an increase in the concentration
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of production in enterprises of increasing size. Underlying these two phenomena Sombart sees a
very general process which is at work in all spheres of western civilization: a process of
"Entseelung" (de-animation) and "Vergeistung" (spiritual reification), which is a consequence of
the inner logic of the capitalist spirit: rationalization goes hand in hand with reification in which
individual animal spirits ("soul") are replaced by overpowering abstract constructs and concepts,
which increasingly assume a life of their own. The evolution of capitalist enterprise is just a
special case, which is transformed "from a community of lively individuals tied to each other by
personal relationships into a system of artfully designed interdependent work performances
which are executed by functionaries in human shape."(Sombart 1927, p. 895) Personal
leadership by the entrepreneur in a traditional sense is replaced by a bureaucratic structure.
Bureaucratization of enterprise goes hand in hand with a growing perfection of methods to
narrow down or even eliminate risks of economic life, which leads to a reduction in the amplitude
of business cycle fluctuations. (ibidem, pp. 680f) Furthermore, with the gradual exhaustion of the
potential for the rationalization of production, "administration" gets the upper hand over
innovation and ever growing perfection. Production for profit ("Erwerbswirtschaft") gives way to
the provision of goods and services for the needs and wants of the population
("Bedarfsdeckungswirtschaft"). (ibidem, p. 1015) State-operated railways and postal services are
cited as examples of this type of enterprise through which a growing number of industries will be
run. In the private sector, freedom of entrepreneurial action is increasingly restricted trough
regulations of the state and also by cartelization and self regulation. Flexibility has given way to
rigidity. (Sombart 1932/2002, p. 442)
Sombart does not go into greater detail as regards technological change in late capitalism. He
predicts a slowdown of productivity growth in the twentieth century, based on two assumptions.
First, due to increasing scarcity of minerals, especially coal, there will be a backward shift
towards a more organic technology. (4) Second, a slowdown of technological progress will
dampen productivity growth in finished goods production. (Sombart 1929)
5. Economic effects of technological change under high capitalism: specific aspects of Sombart's
treatment of technology in the Third Volume
Volumes I and II of Der moderne Kapitalismus give detailed accounts of technological advances
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in the branches of industry and in transport for which Sombart assembles the results of the vast
literature on the history of technology. In the third volume Sombart chooses a different approach.
The broad lines of capitalist development during the nineteenth century are presented under
synoptic aspects which Sombart considers central for the understanding of the process.
Chapter 9 of Der moderne Kapitalismus bears the title "The economic significance of modern
technology" (pp. 111ff). In this chapter Sombart writes about growth and generalization of
knowledge, the enhancement of potential ("Ausweitung des Könnens"), by which he means
control over health, machine power, speed, precision and dependability, increase of the stocks of
material and energy, finally enlargement of the technical apparatus.
Only the last-mentioned effect, which implies greater plant size and higher share of capital in the
value of the product, is economic in the proper sense. The issue is further elaborated in an
extensive chapter on concentration (Ch. 35) where Sombart emphasizes the need for
differentiaton between concentration of production plants, of wealth and of power. Causes of
concentration at the level of industrial production are substantially of technical nature - "it is the
special characteristic of modern technology that advances can be exploited only through
enlargement of the apparatus of the means of production" (p. 830). If the degree of concentration
varies between industrial branches, this is due to the fact that the optimum plant size varies
considerable among branches (pp. 837 ff). Sombart takes rather brief notice of the formation of
giant industrial empires for which concentration of production at plant level is only one of the
causes. Sombart explicitly denies the Marxian version of the concentration thesis. In Sombart's
view, Marx seriously underestimates competitiveness and resistance power of small and medium
sized enterprises.
Ricardo's problem that technological progress of labour saving kind causes unemployment is only
superficially touched upon by Sombart. In a short section on machinery Sombart distinguishes
between "tools" which are designed to support human labour, and "machines" whose very
purpose is to replace labour (p. 103). If, in order to avoid this effect, the use of machines had
been restricted in the pre-capitalist period, now the "will to invent (and use) labour saving
machines“ is an essential characteristic of high capitalism (p.105). Sombart explicitly rejects the
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"compensation theory", that labour made redundant by the introduction of machinery will be
automatically re-employed in some other activity (p. 462). In Sombart's view, re-employment is
only a matter of time during which workers have to be retrained and additional production
capacities can be built up. Hence, this type of unemployment is essentially frictional.
Without any national accounts statistics at his disposal, Sombart tried to give an approximate
quantitative estimate of the impact of technological progress over the nineteenth century. He
warns that taking isolated examples of productivity increases in the production of individual
products would lead to an exaggeration of the pace of the overall movement. On the basis of the
figures of the industrial census for USA Sombart infers that "an increase of 100% during the
period of high capitalism" would be a fair estimate for productivity growth in industry. (p. 243).
At the same time, Sombart emphasizes the complex nature of productivity. Productivity growth
in industry would not have been realized without similar technological advances in the transport
sector and in the agricultural sector.
In the first chapter of the section on technology, Sombart introduces the distinction between
introduction of new processes and of new products. The application of new processes is subject
to a rational calculus, since its condition is that profitability is increased. There is no such
calculus for the introduction of new consumer goods. Only such goods will be produced, which
satisfy some kind of mass demand, and then "they are forced upon (aufoktroyiert) the public by
the capitalist entrepreneur" (p. 95). In Sombart's view, there was no real desire for most
inventions, nobody asked for the "judgement of cultural experts" - hence "the complete
irrationality, the lack of purpose and meaning in our material culture" (ibidem). These particular
value judgements introduced a strong bias into his argument: because he considered mass
consumption and new products to be expressions of cultural decline, Sombart was unable to
assess their potential in an objective way. So he could not imagine that new products such as
radios, television sets, motor cars and even air travel would once become standard components of
household consumption and thus also powerful stimulants of economic growth.
6. Final remarks
Interest in Sombart's work dropped sharply after World War II. In his entry on "technical change"
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in the New Palgrave, S. Metcalfe gives the sole praise for having directed the economists'
attention to technology to Joseph Schumpeter by insisting "that technical progress be viewed as a
transformation arising from within the capitalist system, that it was an integral part of the
competitive process and that a key role was played by the entrepreneur and entrepreneurial
profits in the process by which technologies acquire economic weight" (Metcalfe 1987, p. 618)
This appears somewhat paradoxical, since it was Schumpeter himself, who, in his review of the
third volume of Der moderne Kapitalismus, acknowledged Sombart's concept of economic
system with its basic elements form, spirit and technology elements as major achievement
(Schumpeter 1927, p. 225), with the section on technology "as acme, equally satisfactory with
respect to fortunate vision and fortunate presentation of the material" (ibidem, p. 236).
The fading away of Sombart's once worldwide reputation (5) can not be attributed to inability of
most non-German scholars to read German texts, since references to Sombart in the German
literature on economic history have become very rare too. To mention one example: in the reader
on Moderne Technikgeschichte (Hausen and Rürup 1975) Sombart's Der moderne Kapitalismus
is not cited in any of the contributions, nor is it included in the lengthy bibliography at the end of
that book.
Nonetheless, Sombart deserves full credit for being the first economic historian and economist
who systematically demonstrated the central significance of technological change for economic
development and economic growth from an empirical-historical point of view. The main concern
of most economists of the nineteenth century was capital accumulation, to which the advances of
civilization were primarily attributed. This tendency was re-enforced by the Austrian school of
economics with its theorem of ever-increasing roundaboutness of methods of production. "The
growing influence of the Austrian theory of capital around the turn of the century ... further
encouraged the belief that economic development, even when technical change is allowed for,
typically entails not only an increase of capital per man but also a steady rise of capital
requirements per unit of output" (Blaug 1963/1971, p. 99) It is against this tendency in economic
thinking that Sombart demonstrated the importance of technological change for the advancement
of the economy by assembling an impressive mass of historical evidence on the economic impact
of new technologies. Sombart was not an empirical economist in the modern sense, nor did the
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empirical data available to him permit quantitative analysis of the subject, neither with respect to
output nor with respect to capital. But somehow his attempt too provide a crude estimate of
labour productivity might be interpreted as an - albeit extremely vague - foreboding of the
contributions by Abramovitz and Solow with which the economic research on the technological
change eventually started fifty years ago. In its influence on the stream of economic thinking
Sombart's work on the subject may be seen as complementary to Schumpeter's Theory of
economic development whose first edition was published 10 years after the first edition of
Sombart's Der moderne Kapitalismus.
That the main predictions of Sombart's long term vision for the development of capitalism in his
theory of "Spätkapitalismus" were seriously mistaken no doubt damaged his reputation, whereas
Schumpeter's Capitalism, socialism and democracy, whose visions were hardly more successful
still attracts considerable interest from today's economists (6).
The principal aim of Sombart's magnum opus Der moderne Kapitalimus is the understanding of
capitalism as an economic system through an analysis of long term economic development in the
modern age. Schumpeter (1934, p. 90) characterized Sombart's approach as "historical theory and
theoretical history of capitalism". But in Schumpeter's view, the genuine task of the economist is
different: "Neither do we ask, which changes of this kind have gradually produced the modern
economy in its present form, nor, what are the conditions of such changes.. . Instead, we ask, in
this general sense, in which theory as such asks: How do these changes proceed, and what kind of
economic phenomena do they cause?" (ibidem, p. 94; my own translation)
Clearly, Sombart had only little interest in questions such as how waves of innovations were
financed through the particular mechanisms of the banking system, what sequences of economic
cycles were generated by the successive implementation of new technologies, what are the
implications for the theory of interest, etc., which were of central interest for Schumpeter. It is
Sombart's disdain for contemporary economic theory which is responsible for certain
shortcomings of his approach to the demanding subject, which appears old-fashioned or outdated
under aspects central for modern economic history and theory. Nonetheless, there is still a lot to
be gained today from the work of Werner Sombart.
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Footnotes
(1) The author expresses his thanks to Professor Helge Peukert for making available his paper
"Die Technik im Werk Werner Sombarts" (presented to the Dogmenhistorischer Ausschuss of the
Verein für Sozialpolitik) which give a more comprehensive treatment of the subject. If Sombart's
work is primarily an exercise in economic history (and theory, as he understood it), he was at the
same time strongly interested in various aspects of cultural history to which he devotes extensive
sections. Peukert's paper also covers these parts of Sombart's writings, which are with a few
exceptions neglected in the present paper. Otherwise, secondary literature on Sombart and
technological change is rather scarce and not very specific (Hanel 1996, Krabbe 1996). Very
recently, Hanel's massive study "Assessing Induced Technology" has been published (2008). For a comprehensive overview of Sombart's life and work see Appel 1992. A more detailed
discussion of other aspects of Sombart's work is offered in the three volumes edited by Jürgen
Backhaus (1996).
(2) To give an example of Sombart's style of writing, which often mixes terminologies of
philosophy, different disciplines of social sciences and literature: "Es ist Faustens Geist : der
Geist der Unruhe, der Unrast, der nun den Menschen beseelt . Will man es
Unendlichkeitsstreben nennen, was wir hier sich betätigen sehen, so
hat man Recht,weil das Ziel ins Grenzenlose hinausverlegt ist, weil alle natürlichen Maße der
organischen Gebundenheiten als unzulänglich, beengend von den Vorwärtsdrängenden
empfunden werden. Will man es Machtstreben nennen, so wird man auch nichts Falsches sagen;
denn aus einem tiefsten Grunde, in den unsere Erkenntnis nicht hinabzublicken vermag, quillt
dieser unbeschreibliche Drang des einzelnen Starken, sich durchzusetzen, sein Selbst gegen alle
Gewalten trotzig zu behaupten, die anderen seinem Willen und seinen Taten zu unterwerfen, den
wir als Willen zu Macht bezeichnen können. Will man es Unternehmungsdrang nennen, so drückt
man gewiß auch überall dort etwas Richtiges aus, wo jener Wille zur Macht die Mitwirkung
anderer zur Vollbringung eines gemeinsamen Werkes erheischt.." (Sombart 1916-Vol.I, p. 327)
(3) For a more complete picture of Sombart's theory of Spätkapitalismus which covers the aspects
of economic order and Sombart's interpretation of contemporary economic trends see Chaloupek
1996
(4) As a consequence, Sombart postulated the need of what he called "Reagrarisierung", i.e. of
expanding agriculture's share in the labor force in order to step up domestic production of food
and raw materials for domestic consumption (Sombart 1927, pp. 1019f)
(5) On Sombart's reception in the English-speaking world see the contributions of Peter Senn
(1996) in Backhaus (1996), Vol. III. Of several of Sombart's major works, e.g. Sombart 1896,
1911. His magnum opus Der moderne Kapitalismus has also been translated into English, but the
translation is still unpublished.
(6) It must be added, though, that - despite his pessimistic view of the future of capitalism Schumpeter recognized its continued expansionary potential, even with monopolistic forms of
competition prevailing in substantial parts of the economy. This assessment turned out to be
much more realistic than the stagnationist views, of which Sombart's is only one of many
examples. - For a comparison of Sombart's and Schumpeter's work see Chaloupek 1995.
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References
Abramovitz, Moses 1956. "Resources and Output Trends in the United States since1870", in:
Rosenberg (ed.) 1971, pp. 320-362
Appel, Michael. 1992. Werner Sombart. Theoretiker und Historiker des modernen Kapitalismus.
Marburg : Metropolis-Verlag
Backhaus, Jürgen (ed).1996. Werner Sombart Social Scientist. 3 vols., Marburg : MetropolisVerlag
Blaug, Mark 1963. "A Survey of the Theory of Process Innovations", in: Rosenberg (ed.) 1971,
pp. 86-113
Chaloupek, Günther 1995. "Long-term economic perspectives compared : Joseph Schumpeter
and Werner Sombart". In The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 2:1(Spring
1995)
Chaloupek, Günther 1996. "Long Term Economic Trends in the Light of Werner Sombart's
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