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Distortions of History, Accounting and the Paradox of Werner Sombart

Funnell, Warwick N. (2001) Distortions of History, Accounting and the Paradox of Werner Sombart. Abacus, 12 (1). 55 - 78. ISSN 0001-3072. (doi:10.1111/1467-6281.00074) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:5807)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-6281.00074

Abstract

Sombart's belief that double-entry bookkeeping was essential to the development of capitalism has been criticized by both accounting and economic historians. His substantive conclusions concerning double-entry bookkeeping have been rejected mainly because they result from his selective and self-serving rendition of history. Accounting historians have been preoccupied especially with denouncing his exaggerated appreciation of double-entry bookkeeping. They argue that he attributes far too much importance to its potentialities in preference to the more sober reality found in the historical record. This paper shows that in their denunciation of Sombart's conclusions and his faulty history, accounting history researchers have been seemingly oblivious to the way in which Sombart's anti-Semitism shaped his appreciation of double-entry bookkeeping. He accuses Jews, as exceptional exponents of rational profit calculation, of perpetrating the evils of capitalism. His views of double-entry bookkeeping and the history of economic systems betrayed a strong attachment to a romantic conception of German history which supported German anti-Semitism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sombart's denunciation of Jewish influences extended from their business practices to observations of Jews that were consistently anti-Semitic and sympathetic to those of the Nazis.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1111/1467-6281.00074
Subjects: H Social Sciences
Divisions: Divisions > Kent Business School - Division > Department of Accounting and Finance
Depositing User: Warwick Funnell
Date Deposited: 31 Aug 2008 19:28 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 09:43 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/5807 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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