schumpeter joseph capitalism socialism and democracy

This seems unnecessary because any reader who wishes for a list of the former and a general outline of the latter finds all he needs for our purposes in any dictionary, but especially in the Encyclopedia Britannica or the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. References to Marx’s writings will be confined to a minimum, and no data about his life will be given.But it is worth while to survey the contours and the meaning of the message so many Americans have made their own. Outside of Russia, therefore, the American phenomenon stands alone. But the leaders of socialist thought (not only those allied to the Social Democratic party but also those who went much beyond its cautious conservatism in practical questions) betrayed little taste for reverting to the old tenets and, while worshiping the deity, took good care to keep it at a distance and to reason in economic matters exactly like other economists. In Germany notably, which of all countries had the strongest Marxian tradition, a small orthodox sect indeed kept alive during the post-war socialist boom as it had during the previous depression. Moreover, the bolshevist type of revival produced no similar spurt in those countries which had previously been most steeped in Marxology. What Marxism there was always had been superficial, insignificant and without standing. This phenomenon is so interesting because until the twenties there was no Marxian strain of importance in either the American labor movement or in the thought of the American intellectual. In the case of the Marxian system, such adverse judgment or even exact disproof, by its very failure to injure fatally, only serves to bring out the power of the structure.īut another revival is less easy to explain-the Marxian revival in the United States. On the contrary, we may believe it to be a power of darkness we may think it fundamentally wrong or disagree with it on any number of particular points. We need not believe that a great achievement must necessarily be a source of light or faultless in either fundamental design or details. But there is an additional advantage to defining greatness by revivals: it thereby becomes independent of our love or hate. Taken in this sense, this is undoubtedly the word to apply to the message of Marx.

These we may well call the great ones-it is no disadvantage of this definition that it links greatness to vitality.

They suffer eclipses but they come back again, and they come back not as unrecognizable elements of a cultural inheritance, but in their individual garb and with their personal scars which people may see and touch. MOST of the creations of the intellect or fancy pass away for good after a time that varies between an after-dinner hour and a generation.

Schumpeter joseph capitalism socialism and democracy