SOMBART (Werner).
Socialism and the Social Movement. Translated from the Sixth (Enlarged) German Edition with Introduction and Notes by M. Epstein.
‘Sombart was never a Marxist. But when the third volume of Capital appeared, he praised Marx as an outstanding thinker and described his theory in a very positive way (1894), which in turn was warmly welcomed by Engels. Also, in the first edition of his famous work on socialism and social movements (1896), he discussed Marx from a sympathetic point of view. Its tenth edition, now titled Der proletarische Sozialismus (Marxismus) (1924), was violently anti-socialist and full of hatred and personal insults against Marx. However, this did not hinder Sombart from stating three years later that his Der moderne Kapitalismus was written in the Marxian spirit and that he regarded it in a certain way as the conclusion of Marx’s work’ (New Palgrave). An earlier English translation had been published in New York in 1896.
