Were Capitalism and Communism Created by Jews? Re-examining the Role of Jews in Western History

In 1290, Edward I of England completely expelled the Jews in order to seize their property. As a result, the financial business the Jews had handled was taken over by merchants from Florence and Genoa in Italy. It is argued that the English royal treasury actually became more stable during the roughly 350 years in which no Jews were present.

This is attributed to a structure in which farmers had no choice but to use their financial services in order to raise the tribute they owed to kings and lords.

Jews were restricted in where they could live and what occupations they could choose, and under these constraints they turned to finance as a survival strategy. The explanation is that apart from a sense of being a chosen people, the other traits of Jews can be seen as results of surviving under persecution.

In the 17th century, Jewish financial networks became tightly connected across Europe. Through measures such as halting loans, they grew into a force capable of exerting influence over royal courts, and became something that state-level threats could no longer control. Within the financial community, unity was strengthened by abolishing discrimination against Jews, and this is analyzed as similar to the unity structures seen in today's big tech companies.

The Jewish Enlightenment movement, Haskalah, emphasized that Jews should actively participate in and integrate into European society. However, its real goal was to gain freedom of financial activity through Jewish emancipation after the French Revolution. Moses Mendelssohn pursued this aim by promoting documents on Jewish emancipation through figures such as Count Mirabeau.

As a representative example, the Mendelssohn family converted to Protestantism, established a bank, and obtained permission from Prussia to enter the financial market. This shows that Jewish emancipation focused on securing economic rights rather than simply social integration.

Lending money directly to monarchs and nobles carried high risk, so they chose to spread debt through bond issuance. A method was introduced in which kings' bonds were divided into many pieces and sold on the stock exchange to raise funds. Jewish financiers used the stock exchange to maximize profits through means such as stock manipulation and accumulated enormous wealth.

The Rothschild family played a major role in creating many of the practices of present-day capitalism. They encouraged war bond issuance and lobbied, and sold bonds by using corporate promotion and collateral. It is analyzed that they accumulated wealth by creating artificial demand where none existed and realizing profits from the spread, building a structure in which financial gains were obtained by provoking wars.

Citing the close relationship between Heinrich Heine and the Rothschild family, it presents the view that Jewish emancipation was equated with financial emancipation. In other words, the hypothesis is that the intent was to overthrow industrial capitalists through a workers' revolution and transfer their assets to bankers.

A claim has been raised that Queen Victoria's royal house was no different from a subordinate of Prime Minister Disraeli and Lionel Rothschild. Their influence was maximized as the Rothschild family took seats on the board of the Bank of England and acquired a 45% stake in the Suez Canal in Egypt. This suggests that the Jewish financial dynasty played a decisive role in dominating British politics and economy, and even colonial policy.

The Rothschild family used Moses Schiff as an agent of the bank, and Jacob Schiff was a financier so powerful he was called "the Rothschild of Japan." The Rothschilds, the Kuhn, Loeb & Co. family, and the Warburg family formed a dense financial network through intermarriage. The claim is that through these marriage ties they came to dominate the financial systems of Europe and the United States and accumulated enormous wealth.

A claim has been raised that the Jewish emancipation movement and feminism share social similarities. Europeans regarded Jewish emancipation as morally right, and feminism, which championed respect for women, was likewise accepted as a moral cause in the same context. According to the argument, however, both movements outwardly advanced noble causes while in reality pursuing practical aims of power and money behind the scenes.

The Dreyfus Affair, which occurred in 1894, caused a major shock across European society. Three years after the affair broke out, Zionists began seriously discussing the founding of a Jewish state. The affair became a turning point that sharply divided Western society into left and right. It is analyzed that the political camp logic in Europe was consolidated depending on whether one supported the Jews or recognized and opposed an alleged Jewish conspiracy. This means the Dreyfus Affair was an important turning point not merely as a spy case, but in the rise of Zionism and in the ideological conflict within Europe.

Russell predicted that if these two systems faced each other as equal forces, both would eventually collapse regardless of which one won first. It is analyzed that both systems are now collapsing, which suggests the need for a new political paradigm.