The Merchant of Modernism examines how the figure of the economic Jew symbolizes the struggle of authors from Dickens to Pound to reconcile their critique of capitalism with their own literary practices; this shifting figure parallels the development of literary modernism. Examining the historically intense ambivalence towards the economic Jew becomes a way of reconciling post-Marxist literary and cultural theory with the neo-classical synthesis of mainstream economics. This approach also provides a model for the study of ethnic hatred directed at all middleman economic groups.