Joseph Schumpeter (1883 – 1950)
Economist from Austria and an influential political scientist.
Gentlemen, a depression is for capitalism like a good, cold douche.
Any existing structures and all the conditions of doing business are always in a process of change. Every situation is being upset before it has had time to work itself out. Economic progress, in a capitalist society, means turmoil.
The capitalist process shapes things and souls for socialism.
The stock exchange is a poor substitute for the Holy Grail.
In economic life competition is never completely lacking, but hardly ever is it perfect.
Capitalism stands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death in their pockets. They are going to pass it, whatever the defense they may hear; the only success victorious defense can possibly produce is a change in the indictment.
For one thing, to predict the advent of big business was considering the conditions of Marx's day an achievement in itself.
Schumpeter was the most romantic of economists, and capitalism to his eyes had all the glamor and excitement of a knightly jousting tourney.
Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.
To realize the relative validity of one's convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian.
Nothing is so retentive as a nation's memory.
Cassel is 10 per cent Walras and 90 per cent water.
Lack of outlets, excess capacity, complete deadlock, in the end regular recurrence of national bankruptcies and other disasters-perhaps world wars from sheer capitalist despair-may confidently be anticipated. History is as simple a that.
It is quite possible that future generations will look upon arguments about the inferiority of the socialist plan as we look upon Adam Smith's argument about joint stock companies which, also, were simply false.
Want and effective demand are not the same thing. If they were, the poorest nations would be the ones to display the most vigorous demand.
Situations emerge in the process of creative destruction in which many firms may have to perish that nevertheless would be able to live on vigorously and usefully if they could weather a particular storm.
Nothing is so treacherous as the obvious.
Geniuses and prophets do not usually excel in professional learning, and their originality, if any, is often due precisely to the fact that they do not.
However, if Marx had not been more than a purveyor of phraseology, he would be dead by now.
Innovation is the market introduction of a technical or organisational novelty, not just its invention.