Werner Sombart (1863-1941) was one of the leading German economists and social scientists of the late 19thand early 20thcenturies. The son of an industrialist, his academic career was hampered by his early reputation as a Marxist economist. However, Sombart in his own work reversed Marx’s primacy of base over superstructure and emphasised the role of Geistor spirit. This focus on the psychological foundations of capitalism was to be a constant for Sombart throughout his career and became more pronounced after he became disillusioned with socialism.

Max Weber himself, co-editor with Sombart and Edgar Jaffe of the important journal Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, wrote the following in his most famous work:

In general I do not need specially to point out, although the following studies go back in their most important points of view to much older work, how much they owe in their development to the mere existence of Sombart’s important works, with their pointed formulations and this even, perhaps especially, where they take a different road. Even those who feel themselves continually and decisively disagreeing with Sombart’s views, and who reject many of his theses, have the duty to do so only after a thorough study of his work. (Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 198)

Sombart’s contribution to economic thought as one of the leading figures in the later German Historical School was extremely wide ranging. All of these contributions were brought together by Sombart in his magnum opus of some 3,000 pages (in 193 chapters): Der moderne Kapitalismus: Historisch-systematische Darstellung des gesamt-europaischen Wirtschaftslebens von seinen Anfangen bis zur Gegenwart, the first part of which - concerning pre-capitalist economic life - is translated into English for the first time in this volume.