Excerpt from Werner Sombart's Modern Capitalism Vol. II (currently editing)

[k_a_nitz]

More from Chapter 53 on the attitudes of the 'workers':

But now even this shall we say technical awkwardness of the workers would have been lifted much more rapidly — at least in the course of several generations — if another obstacle had not stood in the way of the training up of a class of workers suitable for capitalist production — an obstacle which was based in the mental state of mind of the people themselves. It is namely quite clear to see that the propertyless or property-poor people of those centuries did not want to work, in any case did not want to work in the way which and on what the capitalist entrepreneurs desired from them. This shall we say natural laziness, idleness, indolence of the great masses was detected by every contemporary who expressed themselves over the labour relations of those centuries with a strange consistency in all the lands of the early capitalist culture. This judgement then solidified in the economic theories and the practical suggestions of reform into the claim that only with low wages were people to be moved to work, and consequently also of course, with everyone for whom it was about an expansion of the capitalist economy, to the demand for as small as possible a calculation of the reward for labour so that people would see themselves forced into regular work. These theories of wages and labour, even of poverty are the outflow of a general opinion over the mental composition of the great masses and can thus serve us as a source from which we can draw the knowledge of the views at the times over labour relations (not so easily these labour relations themselves).