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More than six decades after the annihilation of European Jews and in a time of reviving anti-Semitism, the historian Jerry Z. Muller, a professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, investigates the role of the Jews in modern capitalism. His book is an essay collection that consists of four chapters which were written during the last two decades. The book convincingly outlines the role of Jewish cultural capital as a factor for economic survival. While not based on archival research, the book makes use of the standard literature on the topic in English, German, and French.
The first essay is entitled "The Long Shadow of Usury". Here, Muller explains that many anti-Jewish stereotypes can be attributed to a conscious and constant exaggeration of the role of the Jews in economics and trade. Since lending at interest was generally forbidden for Christians in medieval Europe, while Jews were permitted to charge interest, it was thought that anyone who extracted money from money alone must be "regarded as outside the community of shared values" (p. 15). Modern capitalism made the specific economic role of money-lending Jews superfluous, since that kind of financial activity now characterized Jewish and Gentile capitalists. Capitalism, with its competitive character, created winners, but also many losers. This provided a breeding ground for widespread dissatisfaction.
Jews indeed tended to be successful in a capitalist economy, particularly in banking. Their cultural predisposition and economic expertise helped them to adapt to new conditions precisely when, after the French Revolution, the principle of equality before the law was granted. But a large non-Jewish commercial class also emerged rapidly in all areas where industrialization succeeded. It was from here that anti-Semitic attacks were directed against Jews as an easily identifiable part of the capitalist class. Such attacks were used by anti-capitalist critics, as Muller points out. Occasionally, but not always, he underrates the extent in which Gentile capitalists and their followers used anti-Semitic prejudices as a tool in commercial and political struggle.
To take the German example: anti-Jewish sentiments were popular among the supporters and financiers of the Pan-German League before World War I, the short-lived Deutsche Vaterlandspartei