Rammanohar Lohia and socialism
Dr. Rammanohar Lohia was a great scholar, revolutionary and activist. He was educated at Bombay, Benares, Calcutta and Berlin and he knew several languages. He studied sociology and economics and was a social activist. He was a student of Werner Sombart, under whom he wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the economics of salt. It is notable that in his early days, more known than his friend Max Weber, Sombart was a controversial sociologist and economist. He did not want sociology to be part of social sciences and considered it to be part of humanities because it was more about insider’s perspective rather than outside, objective facts. Initially he was influenced by Marxism but later he gave way “to a more conservative and nationalist and finally an overtly Nazi position.” (Sombart, 2010). While Max Weber ascribes capitalism to Puritanism, Sombart ascribes this to Judaism (Sombart, 2001). To quote (2010)
His work on Jews earned him no friends -- Jews and liberals found it crudely anti-Semitic, while anti-Semites and conservatives considered it too pro-Semitic. By and large, scholars found its sources (if given) questionable and without research merit. But Sombart's book was sadly successful on the marketplace. It had a popular impact which was, if anything, infinitely lamentable. It provided the economic, racial, philosophical and historical "evidence" for the distorted portrait of the stereotypical crafty Jewish capitalist which was then gaining wider acceptance in Europe. |
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