Marksowskie inspiracje Wernera Sombarta. Studium wybranych prac z wrocławskiego okresu życia socjologa

Abstract

The paper offers a discussion of selected works from the early period of Werner Sombart’s work – his work as a professor at the Royal University in Wrocław in the last decade of the 19th and the first decade of the 20th century. The main motive of these works is the strong presence of concepts taken from Karl Marx. Among the key works is the article Zur Kritik des ökonomischen Systems von Karl Marx (1894) and the book Socialism and the Social Movement (first edition in German in 1896), and a few minor publications. In these texts, Marxian concepts are criticized or developed, which caused that at that time Sombart was considered a Marxist and Marxist concepts entered the mainstream scientific discussion. Later in life, Sombart turned back from Marxism, completely revised his book on socialism and the social movement as merely a critique of that movement, and became one of the more important figures of the conservative intellectual community in the Weimar Republic. This attitude was in stark contrast to his interests at the turn of the century.