Note 7 — ON THE NATURE OF CAPITAL[1]

Marx holds that the "primitive accumulation" from which capitalism takes its rise is a matter of force and fraud (Capital, Book I, chap. xxiv.). Sombart holds the source to have been landed wealth (Moderne Kapitalismus, Book II, Part II, especially chap. xii). Ehrenberg and other critics of Sombart incline to the view that the most important source was usury and the petty trade (Zeitalter der Fugger, chaps. i, ii).