ABSTRACT
The study of the social history of capitalism has produced an uneven, often wildly clashing scholarship rooted in theoretical disagreement over what capitalism is. Following Werner Sombart and sociologist Max Weber, two seminal German scholars of the late 19th century, one school has traced the growth of the capitalist “spirit” of economic rationality, enterprise, and profit seeking. A second group has shifted emphasis from business attitudes to commercial organization, identifying capitalism as a process of money-based trade for the purpose of profit. A third camp, working in the tradition of Karl Marx, focuses upon social relations of production as defining or specifically viewing capitalism as a mode of production in which labor power itself becomes a commodity, purchased for the purpose of creating surplus value.
