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Economic Insights
FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF DALLAS VOLUME 6, NUMBER 3

SCHUMPETER
In His Own Words
This article illustrates the thought
process and writing of the economist
who probably best understood capitalism and its evolutionary development.
Joseph Schumpeter is remembered
today for his concept of capitalism’s
tendency for “creative destruction.”
But as Mike Cox demonstrates with
this collection of quotes, Schumpeter’s
writings tackled a number of complex topics, many of which remain
controversial.
Schumpeter was not an idle theorist who wrote solely for his fellow
economists. Rather, he was one of the
last grandly knowledgeable—and profoundly insightful—social theorists of
the 20th century. And one certainly
can’t claim to understand capitalism
without having been introduced to
Schumpeter’s keen observations about
the market process and ideas about its
probable future evolutionary path. We
hope this introduction to his work will
not only enlighten you but perhaps
also inspire you to seek out his many
important contributions to economics.
It will be time well spent.
— Bob McTeer
President
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Born in Czechoslovakia in 1883,
economist Joseph Schumpeter was far
ahead of his time. More clearly than
any other economist past or present,
Schumpeter understood and articulated
the dynamics of the capitalist economic
process. Although perhaps best known
for his theory of “creative destruction,”
Schumpeter also offered many valuable
insights into other areas of economics:
innovation, economic growth, business
cycles, unemployment, saving, income
distribution, monopoly, political economy and more. Only in the past two
decades or so, as economists back away
from the teachings of John Maynard
Keynes and face the failure of macroeconomic theory to adequately explain
economic growth, has Schumpeter’s
genius received due recognition.
Schumpeter graduated from the
University of Vienna in 1904, began
teaching in 1909 at the University of
Czernowitz and then moved to the
University of Graz in Austria. He first
visited the United States in 1924, returning to Europe in 1925 as a professor at the University of Bonn. With
Hitler’s rise in 1932, Schumpeter left
Europe to take a position at Harvard
University, where he remained until his
death in 1950. He was a founding
member of the Econometric Society in
1930 and later served as its president.
He was also president of the American
Economic Association in 1948.
Schumpeter was prolific, with 21
books and pamphlets, 127 articles and
numerous other works to his name. He
is best known for his book Capitalism,
Socialism, and Democracy, published

in 1942. All totaled, he penned more
than 8,400 pages of insightful reading.
No review short of a tome could possibly give adequate credit to his life’s
work. And thus the following sampling
of quotes should be viewed as merely
this author’s favorites, cut twice by half
to fit the space constraints of this publication.

Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system
based on private property rights, pursuit of self-interest, freedom to choose
and ability to borrow. It is a method of
economic change guided by individual
needs and wants and financed by credit
(obtained through debt and equity). Far
from the popular image of a haven for
“corporate fat cats,” a capitalist economy crowns the consumer as king, and
the system provides for the well-being
of the masses.
We have to define that word which
good economists always try to avoid:
capitalism is that form of private
property economy in which innovations are carried out by means of borrowed money. BC, 223.
We must always start from the satisfaction of wants, since they are the
end of all production. TED, 65.
Consumers’ satisfaction supplies the
social meaning for all [capitalist] economic activity. BC, 73.
The fundamental impulse that sets
and keeps the capitalist engine in

Capitalism
“We have to define that word which good economists always try to avoid:
capitalism is that form of private property economy in which innovations
are carried out by means of borrowed money.”

motion comes from the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of
production or transportation, the new
markets, the new forms of industrial
organization that capitalist enterprise
creates. CSD, 83.
These spontaneous and discontinuous changes…appear in the sphere of
industrial and commercial life, not in
the sphere of the wants of the consumers….Assume tastes as “given.”
TED, 65.
The opening up of new markets,
foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft
shop and factory to such concerns
as U.S. Steel illustrate the same
process of industrial mutation— if I
may use that biological term—that
incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one,
incessantly creating a new one. This
process of Creative Destruction is
the essential fact about capitalism.
It is what capitalism consists in and
what every capitalist concern has got
to live in [Schumpeter’s emphasis].
CSD, 83.

Capitalism…is by nature a form or
method of economic change and not
only never is but never can be stationary. CSD, 82.
[Capitalism is]…the perennial gale of
creative destruction. CSD, 84.

Economic Growth
Economies don’t grow, they evolve.
The dictionary defines growth as an
increase in quantity or size. If an economy were to literally grow, it would
have more or bigger companies hiring
more of the same kinds of workers and
producing more of the same goods and
services. Evolution, in contrast, is a
process of continuous change, leading
to a higher, more complex and better
state. Capitalist economies evolve, and
their evolution is endogenous, arising
spontaneously from the ingredients of
the capitalist economic system. The
competition to innovate (so as to gain
market share or simply survive) pushes
living standards forever onward and
upward like a perpetual-motion machine. Moreover, there is no reason to
believe that progress will slow over
time; indeed, it may even speed up as
new technologies spill over into other

Economic Growth
The changes in the economic process brought about by innovation,
together with all their effects, and the response to them by the economic
system, we shall designate by the term Economic Evolution.

areas, making whole new industries
possible or economically feasible. Technology spillovers —unintended consequences—are the alchemy of the capitalist macroeconomic system. Doomsaying in the capitalist economy is a
losing proposition.
The essential point to grasp is that in
dealing with capitalism we are dealing with an evolutionary process.
CSD, 82.
The changes in the economic process
brought about by innovation, together
with all their effects, and the response to them by the economic system, we shall designate by the term
Economic Evolution. BC, 86.
Economists are at long last emerging
from the stage in which price competition was all they saw.…In capitalist
reality…it is not that kind of competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the
new technology, the new source of
supply, the new type of organization…
competition which…strikes…existing
firms…at their foundations and their
very lives. This kind of competition
is…much more effective than the
other…and [is]…the powerful lever
that in the long run expands output.
CSD, 84 –85.
Whenever…a given quantity of output costs less to produce than…
before, we may be sure, if prices
have not fallen, that there has been
innovation somewhere. It need not
necessarily have occurred in the
industry under observation, which
may only be applying, or benefitting
from, an innovation that has occurred
in another. BC, 88 – 89, footnote 1.
We are just now in the downgrade of
a wave of enterprise that created the
electrical power plant, the electrical
industry, the electrified farm and
home and the motorcar. We find all
that very marvelous, [yet]…we cannot

for our lives see where opportunities
of comparable importance are to
come from. As a matter of fact, however,…the mere utilization of the
achievement of the age of electricity…would suffice to provide investment opportunities for quite a time to
come. CSD, 117–18.

lap of the gods may be more or less
productive than any that have thus far
come within our range of observation….There is no reason to expect
slackening of the rate of output
through exhaustion of technological
possibilities. CSD, 118.

Innovation and the Business Cycle
Those writers [Thomas Malthus,
James Mill, David Ricardo] lived at the
threshold of the most spectacular
economic developments ever witnessed. Vast possibilities matured into
realities under their very eyes.
Nevertheless, they saw nothing but
cramped economies, struggling with
ever-decreasing success for their daily
bread. They were convinced that
technological improvement…would…
fail to counteract the fateful law of
decreasing returns…and that a stationary state of the economic process
was near at hand. HEA, 571.
Most of us seem here to commit a
mistake in handling the concept of
decreasing returns….It applies to
given production functions and
generally stationary conditions….
[However, as] a law of decreasing
returns from successive innovations…the statement is entirely
unwarranted….The world of possible
innovation cannot be mapped out.
BC, 499 – 500.
Technological possibilities are an
uncharted sea. We may survey a geographical region and appraise…
that the best plots are first taken into
cultivation, after them the next best
ones and so on. At any given time
during this process it is only relatively
inferior plots that remain to be
exploited in the future. But we cannot reason in this fashion about the
future possibilities of technological
advance. From the fact that some of
them have been exploited before others, it cannot be inferred that the former were more productive than the
latter. And those that are still in the

Competition drives innovation, and
innovation drives progress, but not
without a corresponding economic
churn—out with the old and in with
the new. Schumpeter certainly understood that progress, by nature, is unsettling, but he likely would have
laughed at the adage “I’m in favor of
progress; it’s all the changes I don’t
like.” He saw innovation as the root
cause of most business cycles yet not a
cause for grieving —even during recession—since it is through economic
churn that the interests of the consumer
are ultimately served. Technological innovation sometimes causes a long
wave of economic activity—a tsunami
—during which normal waves all but
disappear.
Innovation is the outstanding fact
in the economic history of capitalist
society or in what is purely economic
in that history, and also it is largely
responsible for most of what we
would at first sight attribute to other
factors. BC, 86.
Surely, nothing can be more plain or
even more trite common sense than
the proposition that innovation…is
at the center of practically all the

phenomena, difficulties, and problems of economic life in capitalist
society. BC, 87.
Individual innovations imply, by
virtue of their nature, a “big” step and
a “big” change. A railroad through
new country, i.e., country not yet
served by railroads, as soon as it gets
into working order upsets all conditions of location, all cost calculations,
all production functions within its
radius of influence; and hardly any
“ways of doing things” which have
been optimal before remain so afterward. BC, 101.
It is by no means farfetched or paradoxical to say that “progress” unstabilizes the economic world, or that it is
by virtue of its mechanism a cyclical
process [Schumpeter’s emphasis]. BC,
138.
It is, after all, only common sense to
realize that, but for the fact that economic life is in a process of incessant
internal change, the business cycle, as
we know it, would not exist. BC, 138.
All we can thus far say about the
duration of the units of [the business
cycle] and of each of [its] two phases
is that it will depend on the nature of
the particular innovations that
carry a given cycle [Emphasis
added]. BC, 143.
These revolutions periodically reshape the existing structure of industry by introducing new methods of

Innovation and the Business Cycle
It is by no means farfetched or paradoxical to say that “progress”
unstabilizes the economic world, or that it is by virtue of its mechanism
a cyclical process.

production — the mechanized factory,
the electrified factory, chemical synthesis and the like; new commodities,
such as railroad service, motorcars,
electrical appliances; new forms of
organization. CSD, 68.
Those revolutions are not strictly
incessant; they occur in discrete
rushes which are separated from each
other by spans of comparative quiet.
The process as a whole works incessantly however, in the sense that
there always is either revolution or
absorption of the results of revolution, both together forming what are
known as business cycles. CSD, 83,
footnote 2.
Our model…does not give to prosperity and recession…the welfare connotations which public opinion [typically] attaches to them. Commonly,
prosperity is associated with social
well-being, and recession with a falling
standard of life. In our picture they
are not, and there is even an implication to the contrary. BC, 142.
Times of innovation…are times of
effort and sacrifice, of work for the
future, while the harvest comes
after.…The harvest is gathered under
recessive symptoms and with more
anxiety than rejoicing.…[During]
recession…much dead wood disappears. BC, 143.
If we glance at those long waves in
economic activity, analysis…reveals
the nature and mechanism of the
capitalist process better than any-

thing else. Each of them consists of
an “industrial revolution” and the
absorption of its effects. CSD, 67.

The Firm, Innovation and Profit
Firms — particularly new ones —
are the means by which innovation
enters the economy. Firms have a life
cycle that begins with the introduction
of a new, better or cheaper product
and ends likewise (with a competitor’s
introduction elsewhere). Firms tend to
be the most profitable when young,
before competitors have had the time
to enter the market with a cheaper, better alternative. Economic development
flows from innovation, and innovation
requires anticipated profit, but profit
sows the seeds of its own demise by
beckoning other suppliers (even outright copiers). Patent laws, in this
regard, can help to preserve profit and
thus stimulate innovation. But over the
long term, the law of the corporate jungle is clear: mutate or die.
Most new firms are founded with an
idea and for a definite purpose. The
life goes out of them when that idea
or purpose has been fulfilled or
has become obsolete or even if, without having become obsolete, it has
ceased to be new. That is the fundamental reason why firms do not exist
forever. Many of them are, of course,
failures from the start. Like human
beings, firms are constantly being
born that cannot live. Others may
meet…death from accident or illness.
Still others die a “natural” death, as
men die of old age. And the “natural”
cause, in the case of firms, is pre-

The Firm, Innovation and Profit
Profit…is the premium put upon successful innovation in capitalist
society and is temporary by nature: it will vanish in the subsequent
process of competition and adaptation.

cisely their inability to keep up the
pace in innovating which they themselves had been instrumental in setting in the time of their vigor. BC,
94 – 95.
It is not the owner of stage-coaches
who builds railways. TED, 66.
Profit…is the premium put upon successful innovation in capitalist society
and is temporary by nature: it will
vanish in the subsequent process of
competition and adaptation. BC, 105.
That is why, as Adam Smith observed, new industries are as a rule
more profitable than old ones. BC,
95, footnote 2.
Practically every enterprise [is] threatened and put on the defensive as
soon as it comes into existence. BC,
107.
For profits to emerge it is essential
that the “suicidal stimulus of profits”
should not act instantaneously. BC, 105.
Without development there is no
profit, without profit no development. TED, 154.
Patent legislation is one of the few
instances of legal recognition of the
social functions of profit in capitalist
society. BC, 107, footnote 1.

Saving
You can’t save your way to wealth
—either personally or as a nation. True
wealth accrues mainly through innovation. Individual fortunes are built that
way, as is the commonwealth.
The classical writers…clearly perceived, though they may have exaggerated, the role of saving and accumulation [as]…they linked saving to
the rate of “progress.” CSD, 76.
Savings is obviously an important
factor in explaining the course of

economic history through the centuries, but it is completely overshadowed by the fact that development
consists primarily in employing existing resources in a different way….
Different methods of employment,
and not saving…have changed the
face of the economic world in the last
fifty years. TED, 68.
The bulk of private fortunes is, in
capitalist society,…the result of the
process of which innovation is the
“prime mover.”…Saving, consistently
carried on through generations, could
not have been nearly so successful as
it was if there had not been surpluses,
due to innovation, from which to
save. BC, 106.

Monopoly
Firms bring new goods to market
precisely with the hope that they can
attain some noncompetitive advantage
—say, a monopoly—and exploit what
they create for profit. Laws that seek to
immediately destroy monopoly, therefore, will slow progress. Private monopolies (though not public ones) tend to be
short-lived as the capitalist economy is
constantly searching for better ways to
satisfy people’s wants and needs. The
more oppressive the monopoly, the
quicker it summons its own death by
inviting a new and better product.
Enterprise would in most cases be
impossible if it were not known from
the outset that exceptionally favorable situations are likely to arise
which if exploited by price, quality
and quantity manipulation will produce profits adequate to tide over
exceptionally unfavorable situations.
CSD, 89 –90.
[Large profits are] the baits that lure
capital on to untried trails. Their presence explains in part how it is possible for so large a section of the capitalist world to work for nothing: in
the midst of the prosperous twenties
just about half of the business corpo-

Monopoly
Pure cases of long-run monopoly must be of the rarest occurrence
[because]…the power to exploit at pleasure a given pattern of demand
…can under the conditions of intact capitalism hardly persist for a
period long enough to matter.

rations in the United States were run
at a loss, at zero profits, or at profits
which, if they had been foreseen,
would have been inadequate to call
forth the effort and expenditure
involved. CSD, 90.
There is no general case for indiscriminate “trust-busting” or for the
prosecution of everything that qualifies as a restraint of trade. Rational as
distinguished from vindictive regulation by public authority turns out to
be an extremely delicate problem
which not every government agency,
particularly when in full cry against
big business, can be trusted to solve.
CSD, 91.
Pure cases of long-run monopoly
must be of the rarest occurrence
[because]…the power to exploit at
pleasure a given pattern of demand
…can under the conditions of intact
capitalism hardly persist for a period
long enough to matter. CSD, 99.
Why then all this talk about monopoly?…Economists, government agents,

journalists, and politicians in this
country obviously love the word because it…is sure to rouse the public’s
hostility. CSD, 99 –100.

Credit and Capital
The capitalist engine runs on
credit. Every new venture requires
funding — either through borrowing
(debt) or ownership (equity) —because
the people with new ideas (the innovators) and those best able to market
them (the entrepreneurs) aren’t generally those who are flush with cash
(the capitalists). Without credit, the
economic system would yield as little
fruit as were there no new ideas or
people to sell them. Strong new firms
choke out old weak ones, in part, by
raising the cost of credit everywhere.
Capitalism is that form of private
property economy in which innovations are carried out by means of
borrowed money…[that is,] credit
creation….Most of the features…of
capitalism would be absent from the
economic and…cultural process of a
society without credit creation….

Credit and Capital
For actions which consist in carrying out innovations we reserve
the term Enterprise; the individuals who carry them out we call
Entrepreneurs.

Living Standards of the Masses and the
Distribution of Income
The capitalist engine is first and last an engine of mass production which
unavoidably means also production for the masses.

Therefore, we shall date capitalism as
far back as the element of credit creation. BC, 223 – 24.

Enterprise; the individuals who carry
them out we call Entrepreneurs. BC,
102.

Credit creation [is] the monetary complement of innovation. This relation
…is at the bottom of all the problems
of money and credit. BC, 111.

The entrepreneur may, but need not,
be the “inventor” of the good or
process he introduces. Also, the entrepreneur may, but need not, be the person who furnishes the capital. BC, 103.

The carrying into effect of an innovation involves, not primarily an
increase in existing factors of production, but the shifting of existing
factors from old to new uses….If
innovation is financed by credit creation, the shifting of the factors is
effected not by the withdrawal of
funds— “canceling the old order”—
from the old firms, but by the reduction of the purchasing power of
existing funds which are left with the
old firms while newly created funds
are put at the disposal of entrepreneurs: the new “order to the factors”
comes, as it were, on top of the old
one, which is not thereby canceled.
BC, 111–12.
For actions which consist in carrying
out innovations we reserve the term

Risk bearing is no part of the
entrepreneurial function. It is the
capitalist who bears the risk. The
entrepreneur does so only to the
extent…he loses other people’s
money. BC, 104.
The only realistic definition of stockholders is that they are the creditors
(capitalists) who forego part of the
legal protection usually extended to
creditors, in exchange for the right to
participate in profits. BC, 104.

Living Standards of the Masses
and the Distribution of Income
Capitalism’s greatest accomplishment is that it progressively raises the
living standards of the masses. Nobody
ever got rich selling just to the rich. To

Employment, Unemployment, Jobs and Labor
I do not think that unemployment is among those evils which, like
poverty, capitalist evolution could ever eliminate of itself. I also do not
think that there is any tendency for the unemployment percentage to
increase in the long run.

prosper under capitalism, you must
make your product affordable to the
masses—get rich raising the general
welfare. The opportunity to prosper is
itself open to the general masses, making upward income mobility and a fluid
income distribution the norm of the
capitalist system.
The capitalist process, not by coincidence but by virtue of its mechanism,
progressively raises the standard of
life of the masses. It does so through
a sequence of vicissitudes, the severity of which is proportional to the
speed of the advance. But it does
so effectively. One problem after
another of the supply of commodities
to the masses has been successfully
solved by being brought within the
reach of the methods of capitalist
production. CSD, 68.
The capitalist engine is first and last
an engine of mass production which
unavoidably means also production
for the masses. CSD, 67.
Electric lighting is no great boon to
anyone who has money enough to
buy a sufficient number of candles
and to pay servants to attend them.
It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton
and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars
and so on that are the typical
achievements of capitalist production, and not as a rule improvements that would mean much to a
rich man. Queen Elizabeth owned
silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in
providing more silk stockings for
queens but in bringing them within
the reach of factory girls in return
for steadily decreasing amounts of
effort. CSD, 67.
The water-tight division between
people who (together with their descendants) are supposed to be capitalists once for all and others who…
are supposed to be proletarians once
for all is not only…utterly unrealistic

but it misses the salient point about
social classes—the incessant rise and
fall of individual families into and out
of the upper strata. CSD, 18.

Employment, Unemployment,
Jobs and Labor
Most layoffs stem not from the failure of the worker or the firm or the
capitalist economic system, but — to
the contrary—owe to the success of
someone somewhere else who has
invented a new, better or cheaper
product and, in doing so, lessened the
demand for existing ones. Still, labor
will never see it that way and will seek
laws designed to protect existing jobs
or provide for unemployment. Only
through allowing capitalism’s creative
destruction to work unfettered can
society fully enjoy the higher levels of
consumption, shorter work week and
better working conditions that the
mechanism brings.
It is obvious…that in the case of
replacement of a carriage by motorcar, the coachman will be technologically unemployed…in the narrow
sense, although no machine drives
his horses henceforth, or that it does
not make any difference whether a
bookkeeping clerk becomes unemployed because of the introduction
of a calculating machine or another
rationalizing device, or whether a
cotton picker becomes unemployed
because of the introduction of a
cotton-picking machine or because
cotton is being eliminated by the
competition of the standard fiber.
BC, 514 –15.
Technological Unemployment. This
term…cover[s]…displacement of workmen by machinery…[and by] industries that introduce new production
functions. Questionnaires devised to
find out from workmen reasons for
their dismissal can, therefore, never
bring out the phenomenon we mean
and will always yield results that
understate it. BC, 514.

Only in a minority of cases will workmen be able to recognize the technological change responsible for their
dismissal. For this it would be necessary that machines be introduced in
an existent plant under the eyes of
the workmen and that dismissal be
effected immediately after. BC, 514,
footnote 1.
I do not think that unemployment is
among those evils which, like
poverty, capitalist evolution could
ever eliminate of itself. I also do not
think that there is any tendency for
the unemployment percentage to
increase in the long run. CSD, 69.
But whether lasting or temporary,
getting worse or not, unemployment
undoubtedly is and always has been
a scourge….The real tragedy is not
unemployment per se, but unemployment plus the impossibility of
providing adequately for the unemployed without impairing the conditions of further economic development
[Schumpeter’s emphasis]. CSD, 70.
Finally, we should take account of
variations in the amount of voluntary
leisure, which…undoubtedly often is
one form of taking increased real
income….In this sense the reduction
of working hours is one of the most
significant “products” of economic
evolution. BC, 497 – 98.

Capitalism’s Greatest Enemy:
The Intellectual
The proper role of a healthily functioning economy is to destroy jobs and

put labor to better use elsewhere.
Despite this simple truth, layoffs and
firings will still always sting, as if the
invisible hand of free enterprise has
slapped workers in the face. Unsettling
by nature, capitalism’s churn gives rise
to a labor movement designed to protect workers from job loss. That movement is fed emotionally by displaced
workers and others who blame the
capitalist system for their troubles, but
it is led psychologically by a whole
other type of person —the intellectual.
Intellectuals —with little to do owing to
the success of the capitalist economic
system but with an intense desire to be
seen as caretakers of society’s general
well-being —anoint themselves as leaders of the labor movement. They object
to capitalism on moralistic grounds and
seek its destruction and replacement
by another system—socialism —which
places them center stage.
I felt it my duty…to inflict upon the
reader…my paradoxical conclusion:
capitalism is being killed by its
achievements. CSD, xiv.
Capitalism inevitably…educates and
subsidizes a vested interest in social
unrest. CSD, 146.
One of the most important features of
the later stages of capitalist civilization is the vigorous expansion of the
educational apparatus and particularly of the facilities for higher education. CSD, 152.
The man who has gone through a
college or university easily becomes

Capitalism’s Greatest Enemy: The Intellectual
I felt it my duty…to inflict upon the reader…my paradoxical
conclusion: capitalism is being killed by [one of ] its achievements…
[the] swell [in] the host of intellectuals.

psychically unemployable in manual
occupations without necessarily acquiring employability in, say, professional work. CSD, 152.
All those who are unemployed or
unsatisfactorily employed or unemployable drift into the vocations in
which standards are least definite.…They swell the host of intellectuals…whose numbers hence increase disproportionately. They enter
it in a thoroughly discontented frame
of mind. Discontent breeds resentment….righteous indignation about
the wrongs of capitalism. CSD, 153.
The hostility of the intellectual
group — amounting to moral disapproval of the capitalist order—is
one thing, and the general hostile
atmosphere which surrounds the
capitalist engine is another thing.
CSD, 153.
Capitalist evolution produces a labor
movement which obviously is not the
creation of the intellectual group. But
it is not surprising that such an
opportunity and the intellectual demiurge should find each other. Labor
never craved intellectual leadership
but intellectuals invaded labor politics. They had an important contribution to make: they verbalized the
movement, supplied theories and slogans for it— class war is an excellent
example — made it conscious of
itself….They naturally radicalized it,
eventually imparting a revolutionary
bias to the most bourgeois tradeunion practices….Having no genuine
authority and feeling always in danger of being unceremoniously told to
mind his own business,…[the intellectual] must flatter, promise and
incite, nurse left wings…appeal to
fringe ends.…Thus, though intellectuals have not created the labor movement, they have yet worked it up into
something that differs substantially
from what it would be without
them….[This]…explains why public

Schumpeter’s prognosis
of the death of capitalism
has not been borne out,
perhaps in part because
of his brilliant exposure
of capitalism’s enemies
and the treachery they plot.

policy grows more and more hostile
to capitalist interests. Intellectuals
rarely enter professional politics and
still more rarely conquer responsible
office. But they staff political bureaus,
write party pamphlets and speeches,
act as secretaries and advisers, make
the…politician’s…reputation….In
doing these things they…impress
their mentality on almost everything
that is being done. CSD, 153 – 54.
Capitalism stands its trial before
judges who have the sentence of
death in their pockets….The only success victorious defense can possibly
produce is a change in the indictment. CSD, 144.

Schumpeter’s prognosis of the death
of capitalism has not been borne out,
perhaps in part because of his brilliant
exposure of capitalism’s enemies and
the treachery they plot. Herein lie both
the paradox and the promise. We must
remember that Schumpeter was himself an intellectual, who surely enjoyed
winning intellectual battles. No doubt
he sought to defeat socialism’s most
formidable intellectual, Karl Marx. But
having fled Europe in 1932 upon
the rise of Hitler’s totalitarian state,
Schumpeter took up berth in Harvard’s
department of economics and once
again, paradoxically, found himself
immersed in a sea of anticapitalists:
university professors.
The chronology of Schumpeter’s

writing as it intertwines with his life
experience says much. We must not
ignore the fact that it was in 1942 —following a decade at Harvard — that
Schumpeter proffered (in Capitalism,
Socialism, and Democracy) his trenchant indictment of the intellectual
establishment whose swell he saw as
the greatest threat to capitalism’s future.
Like a prophet who alters the course of
history by revealing its possible future
path, Schumpeter perhaps even sought
to fight and win the intellectual battle
with capitalism’s enemies yet unborn. ■
—W. Michael Cox
Senior Vice President
and Chief Economist

References
BC: Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1939), Business
Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical
Analysis of the Capitalist Process (New York:
McGraw-Hill).
CSD: ——— (1950), Capitalism, Socialism,
and Democracy, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper
and Brothers), orig. pub. 1942.
HEA: ——— (1954), The History of Economic
Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press).
TED: ——— (1936), The Theory of Economic
Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital,
Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).

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