Joseph Schumpeter 资本主义能生存吗？
https://bpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.middlebury.edu/dist/4/1470/files/2010/08/schumpeter.pdf
约瑟夫·熊彼特 （1883-1950）
约瑟夫·熊彼特是一位涉猎广泛的经济学家，他广泛地撰写了有关经济体系的文章。他出生于捷克斯洛伐克，但一生大部分时间在美国度过。
除了 1919-20 年担任奥地利财政部长期间，他还是经济学教授，在包括哈佛大学在内的多所大学任教，从 1932 年起直至去世。
作为一名兴趣广泛（不仅限于经济学）的学者，他曾说自己在以下三个类别中的两个方面是他那个时代最优秀的：骑士、经济学家、情人。在这三个类别中的哪两个方面他最优秀？他总是把这个决定留给他的读者。
他的《资本主义、社会主义和民主》于 1942 年首次出版，是最受欢迎的经济学书籍之一。在本选集中，他认为资本主义凭借其自身的成功将破坏其活力——企业家精神——真正的“社会主义的领跑者不是那些宣扬社会主义的知识分子或鼓动者，而是范德比尔特、卡内基和洛克菲勒家族[巨型工业家]”。
约瑟夫·熊彼特。1942 年（第 3 版：1950 年）。资本主义、社会主义与民主。纽约：Harper Torchbooks，Harper and Row Publishers，第 132-34、141-42、150-51、417-18 页。
资本主义能生存吗？
我们已经看到，企业家的职能是利用一项发明，或者更广泛地说，利用一项未经尝试的技术可能性，以新的方式生产新商品或生产旧商品，开辟新的材料供应源或新的产品销售渠道，重组行业等，改革或革新生产模式。早期的铁路建设、第一次世界大战前的电力生产、蒸汽和钢铁、汽车、殖民企业，这些都提供了一个大类的壮观例子，其中包括无数低级的例子——甚至是成功生产某种香肠或牙刷。这种活动主要是造成反复出现的“繁荣”的原因，这种繁荣会彻底改变经济有机体，而反复出现的“衰退”则是由于新产品或方法的不平衡影响造成的。承担这些新事物很困难，而且构成了独特的经济功能。
首先，因为它们超出了每个人都理解的常规任务，其次，因为环境以多种方式抵制，根据社会条件的不同，从简单地拒绝资助或购买新事物，到对试图生产它的人进行人身攻击。要自信地超越熟悉的灯塔范围采取行动并克服这种阻力，需要只有一小部分人口才具备的能力，这些能力定义了企业家类型和企业家功能。这项功能本质上并不在于发明任何东西或以其他方式创造企业利用的条件。它在于把事情做好。这项社会功能已经失去重要性，而且即使以企业家精神为主要推动力的经济过程本身继续进行，未来也必将以更快的速度失去它。因为，一方面，现在做超出常规的事情比过去容易得多——创新本身也正在沦为常规。
技术进步越来越成为训练有素的专家团队的业务，他们生产出所需的产品，并使其以可预测的方式发挥作用。早期商业冒险的浪漫正在迅速消退，因为现在有太多东西可以严格计算，而过去这些东西只能在天才的灵光一闪中才能想象出来。
另一方面，在已经习惯了经济变化的环境中，个性和意志力的作用就小了——最好的例子是源源不断的新的消费者和生产者商品——人们不是抵制，而是理所当然地接受它。
只要资本主义秩序继续存在，来自生产过程创新威胁的利益集团的抵制就不太可能消失。例如，大规模生产廉价住房的道路上最大的障碍是彻底的机械化和全面消除低效的工作方法。但所有其他类型的阻力——尤其是消费者和生产者对新事物的阻力——几乎已经消失了。因此，经济进步趋于非人格化和自动化。官僚和委员会的工作倾向于取代个人行动。……[参考]军事类比将有助于阐明要点。在过去，大约到拿破仑战争[1803-1815]为止，将领意味着领导，成功意味着指挥官的个人成功，他以如此多的金钱获得相应的“利润”。
社会威望。战争技术和军队结构就是这样，领导者的个人决策和驱动力——甚至他骑在一匹华丽的马上——都是战略和战术局势中必不可少的因素。拿破仑的存在曾经是，也必须被真正地感受到，在他的战场上。现在情况已经不同了。合理化和专业化的办公室工作最终会抹杀个性、可计算的结果和“远见”。领导者不再有机会投身战斗。他正在变成另一个办公室职员——而且是一个并不总是很难取代的人。或者再举一个军事类比。
中世纪的战争是非常私人的事情。装甲骑士练习一种需要终身训练的艺术，他们每个人都凭借个人技能和实力而独树一帜。很容易理解为什么这种技艺应该成为社会阶层的基础，这个词的意义最为充分和丰富。但社会和技术变革削弱并最终摧毁了该阶级的功能和地位。战争本身并没有因此而停止。它只是变得越来越机械化——最终变得如此之多，以至于在如今仅仅是一项职业的成功不再具有个人成就的内涵，而这种成就不仅会提升个人，还会提升他的群体，使其获得持久的社会领导地位。
现在，类似的社会过程——归根结底是相同的社会过程——削弱了资本主义企业家的作用，以及他的社会地位。他的角色，虽然不如中世纪大大小小的军阀那么光鲜，但也只是另一种形式的个人领导，凭借个人力量和个人对成功的责任而行动。
他的地位，就像武士阶级的地位一样，一旦这一社会功能在社会过程中失去重要性，就会受到威胁，无论是由于它所服务的社会需求的停止，还是由于这些需求由其他更不人性化的方法满足，他的地位都会受到威胁。但这影响了整个资产阶级阶层的地位。尽管企业家从一开始就不一定或通常不是该阶层的成员，但他们在成功的情况下仍然会进入该阶层。
因此，尽管企业家本身不构成一个社会阶层，但资产阶级吸收了他们及其家庭和关系，从而在当前招募和振兴自己，同时，那些与“商业”断绝积极关系的家庭在一代或两代之后退出了该阶层。在这两者之间，有我们所说的工业家、商人、金融家和银行家的大部分；他们处于创业和仅仅管理继承领域的中间阶段。该阶级赖以生存的回报，以及该阶级的社会地位，都取决于这一或多或少活跃的阶层的成功——当然，正如在这个国家的情况一样，这一阶层可能占资产阶级阶层的 90% 以上——以及那些正在上升到该阶级的个人的成功。因此，从经济和社会学的角度来看，资产阶级直接和间接地依赖于企业家，作为一个阶级，它与企业家共存亡，尽管很可能会出现一个或多或少延长的过渡阶段——最终，在这个阶段，资产阶级可能会感到既不能死也不能活，就像封建文明的情况一样。
引言
总结一下我们论点的这一部分：如果资本主义的发展——“进步”——要么停止，要么完全自动化，那么工业资产阶级的经济基础最终将减少到当前行政工作所支付的工资，除了可能持续一段时间的准租金和垄断收益的残余。由于资本主义企业凭借其成就，倾向于使进步自动化，我们得出结论，它倾向于使自己变得多余——在自身成功的压力下分崩离析。完全官僚化的巨型工业单位不仅驱逐了中小型企业并“剥夺”了其所有者，而且最终还驱逐了企业家并剥夺了资产阶级，而资产阶级在这个过程中不仅会失去收入，而且会失去更重要的功能。社会主义的真正先驱不是那些宣扬社会主义的知识分子或鼓动者，而是范德比尔特家族、卡内基家族和洛克菲勒家族。
这一结果可能并不完全符合马克思主义社会主义者的口味，更不符合更通俗（马克思会说是庸俗）社会主义者的口味。但就预测而言，它与他们的预测并无不同。
因此，资本主义进程将所有这些制度推到了次要地位，特别是财产制度和自由契约制度，这些制度表达了资本主义的需求。
以及真正“私人”经济活动的方式。如果资本主义没有废除这些方式，因为它已经废除了劳动力市场的自由承包，那么它就通过改变现有法律形式的相对重要性（例如，与合伙企业或个人企业有关的法律形式）或改变其内容或含义来达到同样的目的。资本主义过程通过用一小块股份取代工厂的墙壁和机器，使财产的概念失去了生命力。它放松了曾经如此强大的控制力——这种控制力是指合法权利和对自己财产的实际能力；这种控制力也是指所有权持有者失去了在经济、身体和政治上为“他的”工厂及其控制权而斗争的意愿，必要时甚至会死在工厂的台阶上。我们可以称之为财产的物质实质（即其可见和可触摸的现实）的消失不仅影响了持有者的态度，也影响了工人和公众的态度。非物质化、非功能化和缺席的所有权不会像财产的重要形式那样给人留下深刻印象并唤起道德忠诚。最终，将没有人真正关心维护它——无论是在大型企业 [公司] 内部还是外部。
我已经在其他地方解释了相信资本主义秩序倾向于自我毁灭和中央集权社会主义是……可能的继承者的原因。简要而肤浅地讲，这些原因可以归纳为四个方面。首先，商业阶层在发展这个国家的生产力方面所取得的成功，以及这一成功为所有阶层创造了新的生活标准这一事实，却自相矛盾地削弱了同一商业阶层的社会和政治地位，尽管其经济职能并未过时，但趋于过时并易于官僚化。其次，资本主义活动本质上是“理性的”，它倾向于传播理性的思维习惯，并破坏那些忠诚和上级与下级的习惯，而这些对于生产工厂制度化领导的有效运作却是必不可少的：任何社会制度都不可能完全建立在（法律上）平等的缔约方之间的自由合同网络之上，在这个网络中，每个人都应该只受自己（短期）功利目的的指导。第三，商业阶层专注于工厂和办公室的工作，这有助于建立一个政治体系和一个知识阶层，其结构和利益发展出一种独立于大型企业利益的态度，并最终对大型企业的利益产生敌意。后者越来越无法保护自己免受短期内对其他阶层有利可图的袭击。第四，由于这一切，资本主义社会的价值观体系虽然与其经济成功有因果关系，但不仅在公众心目中，而且在“资本家”阶层本身中也失去了影响力。虽然我还有很多时间，但需要一点时间来说明如何从这些方面解释现代对安全、平等和监管（经济工程）的追求。
经济学经典读物
要弄清资本主义社会的解体过程已经到了何种程度，最好的办法就是观察其影响在多大程度上被商业阶层本身和大量经济学家视为理所当然，这些经济学家认为自己反对（百分之百的）社会主义，并且习惯于否认任何社会主义倾向的存在。仅就后者而言，他们不仅毫无疑问地而且赞同地接受：（1）各种旨在防止经济衰退或至少是萧条的稳定政策，即大量的公共商业管理，即使不是充分就业的原则；（2）“收入更加平等的愿望”，很少定义他们愿意在多大程度上实现绝对平等，以及与此相关的再分配税收原则； (3) 价格方面，各种监管措施种类繁多，经常以反垄断口号为借口；(4) 劳动力和货币市场的公共控制，尽管范围很广；(5) 无限扩大现在或最终将由公共企业满足的需求范围，无论是免费的还是基于某种邮政原则；(6) 当然还有各种安全立法。我相信，瑞士有一座山，经济学家们在那里召开了大会，表达了对所有或大多数这些事情的反对。但这些诅咒甚至没有引起攻击。
About Joseph Schumpeter
https://bpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.middlebury.edu/dist/4/1470/files/2010/08/schumpeter.pdf?
Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) was a wide-ranging economist who wrote with a broad brush about economic systems. He was born in Czechoslovakia but spent much of his life in the United States. Except for the period 1919-20 when he was Austria’s minister of finance, he was a professor of economics, teaching at various universities, including Harvard from 1932 until the end of his life. A scholar whose interests encompassed many fields, not just economics, he once said that he was the best of his time in two of the following three categories: horseman, economist, lover. In which two of the three was he the best? He always left this decision to his audience. His Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, first published in 1942, is one of the most popular economics books. In this selection he argues that capitalism, by its own success, will undermine its dynamic—entrepreneurship—and that the true “pacemakers of socialism were not the intellectuals or agitators who preached it but the [giant industrialists] Vanderbilts, Carnegies and Rockefellers.” Joseph Schumpeter. 1942 (3rd edition: 1950). Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper Torchbooks, Harper and Row Publishers, pp. 132-34, 141-42, 150-51, 417-18.
Can Capitalism Survive?
We have seen that the function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production by exploiting an invention or, more generally, an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity or producing an old one in a new way, by opening up a new source of supply of materials or a new outlet for products, by reorganizing an industry and so on. Railroad construction in its earlier stages, electrical power production before the First World War, steam and steel, the motorcar, colonial ventures afford spectacular instances of a large genus which comprises innumerable humbler ones —down to such things as making a success of a particular kind of sausage or toothbrush. This kind of activity is primarily responsible for the recurrent “prosperities” that revolutionize the economic organism and the recurrent “recessions” that are due to the disequilibrating impact of the new products or methods. To undertake such new things is difficult and constitutes a distinct economic function, first, because they lie outside of the routine tasks which everybody understands and, secondly, because the environment resists in many ways that vary, according to social conditions, from simple refusal either to finance or to buy a new thing, to physical attack on the man who tries to produce it. To act with confidence beyond the range of familiar beacons and to overcome that resistance requires aptitudes that are present in only a small fraction of the population and that define the entrepreneurial type as well as the entrepreneurial function. This function does not essentially consist in either inventing anything or otherwise creating the conditions which the enterprise exploits. It consists in getting things done.
This social function is already losing importance and is bound to lose it at an accelerating rate in the future even if the economic process itself of which entrepreneurship was the prime mover went on unabated. For, on the one hand, it is much easier now than it has been in the past to do things that lie outside familiar routine—innovation itself is being reduced to routine. Technological progress is increasingly becoming the business of teams of trained specialists who turn out what is required and make it work in predictable ways. The romance of earlier commercial adventure is rapidly wearing away, because so many more things can be strictly calculated that had of old to be visualized in a flash of genius.
On the other hand, personality and will power must count for less in environments which have become accustomed to economic change—best instanced by an incessant stream of new 28 CLASSIC READINGS IN ECONOMICS consumers’ and producers’ goods—and which, instead of resisting, accept it as a matter of course. The resistance which comes from interests threatened by an innovation in the productive process is not likely to die out as long as the capitalist order persists. It is, for instance, the great obstacle on the road toward mass production of cheap housing which presupposes radical mechanization and wholesale elimination of inefficient methods of work on the plot. But every other kind of resistance—the resistance, in particular, of consumers and producers to a new kind of thing because it is new—has well-nigh vanished already.
Thus, economic progress tends to become depersonalized and automatized. Bureau and committee work tends to replace individual action. . . . [R]eference to the military analogy will help to bring out the essential point.
Of old, roughly up to and including the Napoleonic Wars [1803-1815], generalship meant leadership and success meant the personal success of the man in command who earned corresponding “profits” in terms of social prestige. The technique of warfare and the structure of armies being what they were, the individual decision and driving power of the leading man— even his actual presence on a showy horse—were essential elements in the strategical and tactical situations. Napoleon’s presence was, and had to be, actually felt on his battlefields. This is no longer so. Rationalized and specialized office work will eventually blot out personality, the calculable result, the “vision.” The leading man no longer has the opportunity to fling himself into the fray. He is becoming just another office worker—and one who is not always difficult to replace.
Or take another military analogy. Warfare in the Middle Ages was a very personal affair. The armored knights practiced an art that required lifelong training and every one of them counted individually by virtue of personal skill and prowess. It is easy to understand why this craft should have become the basis of a social class in the fullest and richest sense of that term. But social and technological change undermined and eventually destroyed both the function and the position of that class. Warfare itself did not cease on that account. It simply became more and more mechanized—eventually so much so that success in what now is a mere profession no longer carries that connotation of individual achievement which would raise not only the man but also his group into a durable position of social leadership.
Now a similar social process—in the last analysis the same social process—undermines the role and, along with the role, the social position of the capitalist entrepreneur. His role, though less glamorous than that of medieval warlords, great or small, also is or was just another form of individual leadership acting by virtue of personal force and personal responsibility for success. His position, like that of warrior classes, is threatened as soon as this function in the social process loses its importance, and no less if this is due to the cessation of the social needs it served than if those needs are being served by other, more impersonal, methods.
But this affects the position of the entire bourgeois stratum. Although entrepreneurs are not necessarily or even typically elements of that stratum from the outset, they nevertheless enter it in case of success. Thus, though entrepreneurs do not per se form a social class, the bourgeois class absorbs them and their families and connections, thereby recruiting and revitalizing itself currently while at the same time the families that sever their active relation to “business” drop out of it after a generation or two. Between, there is the bulk of what we refer to as industrialists, merchants, financiers and bankers; they are in the intermediate stage between entrepreneurial venture and mere current administration of an inherited domain. The returns on which the class lives are produced by, and the social position of the class rests on, the success of this more or less active sector—which of course may, as it does in this country, form over 90 per cent of the bourgeois stratum—and of the individuals who are in the act of rising into that class. Economically and sociologically, directly and indirectly, the bourgeoisie therefore depends on the entrepreneur and, as a class, lives and will die with him, though a more or less prolonged transitional stage—eventually a stage in which it may feel equally unable to die and to live—is quite likely to occur, as in fact it did occur in the case of the feudal civilization.
INTRODUCTION
To sum up this part of our argument: if capitalist evolution—“progress”—either ceases or becomes completely automatic, the economic basis of the industrial bourgeoisie will be reduced eventually to wages such as are paid for current administrative work excepting remnants of quasi-rents and monopoloid gains that may be expected to linger on for some time. Since capitalist enterprise, by its very achievements, tends to automatize progress, we conclude that it tends to make itself superfluous—to break to pieces under the pressure of its own success. The perfectly bureaucratized giant industrial unit not only ousts the small or medium-sized firm and “expropriates” its owners, but in the end it also ousts the entrepreneur and expropriates the bourgeoisie as a class which in the process stands to lose not only its income but also what is infinitely more important, its function. The true pacemakers of socialism were not the intellectuals or agitators who preached it but the Vanderbilts, Carnegies and Rockefellers. This result may not in every respect be to the taste of Marxian socialists, still less to the taste of socialists of a more popular (Marx would have said, vulgar) description. But so far as prognosis goes, it does not differ from theirs. . . Thus the capitalist process pushes into the background all those institutions, the institutions of property and free contracting in particular, that expressed the needs and ways of the truly “private” economic activity. Where it does not abolish them, as it already has abolished free contracting in the labor market, it attains the same end by shifting the relative importance of existing legal forms—the legal forms pertaining to corporate business for instance as against those pertaining to the partnership or individual firm—or by changing their contents or meanings. The capitalist process, by substituting a mere parcel of shares for the walls of, and the machines in, a factory, takes the life out of the idea of property. It loosens the grip that once was so strong—the grip in the sense of the legal right and the actual ability to do as one pleases with one’s own; the grip also in the sense that the holder of the title loses the will to fight, economically, physically, politically, for “his” factory and his control over it, to die if necessary on its steps. And this evaporation of what we may term the material substance of property—its visible and touchable reality—affects not only the attitude of holders but also that of the workmen and of the public in general. Dematerialized, defunctionalized and absentee ownership does not impress and call forth moral allegiance as the vital form of property did. Eventually there will be nobody left who really cares to stand for it—nobody within and nobody without the precincts of the big concerns [companies].
Thus the capitalist process pushes into the background all those institutions, the institutions of property and free contracting in particular, that expressed the needs and ways of the truly “private” economic activity. Where it does not abolish them, as it already has abolished free contracting in the labor market, it attains the same end by shifting the relative importance of existing legal forms—the legal forms pertaining to corporate business for instance as against those pertaining to the partnership or individual firm—or by changing their contents or meanings. The capitalist process, by substituting a mere parcel of shares for the walls of, and the machines in, a factory, takes the life out of the idea of property. It loosens the grip that once was so strong—the grip in the sense of the legal right and the actual ability to do as one pleases with one’s own; the grip also in the sense that the holder of the title loses the will to fight, economically, physically, politically, for “his” factory and his control over it, to die if necessary on its steps. And this evaporation of what we may term the material substance of property—its visible and touchable reality—affects not only the attitude of holders but also that of the workmen and of the public in general. Dematerialized, defunctionalized and absentee ownership does not impress and call forth moral allegiance as the vital form of property did. Eventually there will be nobody left who really cares to stand for it—nobody within and nobody without the precincts of the big concerns [companies].
The reasons for believing that the capitalist order tends to destroy itself and that centralist socialism is . . . a likely heir apparent I have explained elsewhere. Briefly and superficially, these reasons may be summed up under four heads. First, the very success of the business class in developing the productive powers of this country and the very fact that this success has created a new standard of life for all classes has paradoxically undermined the social and political position of the same business class whose economic function, though not obsolete, tends to become obsolescent and amenable to bureaucratization. Second, capitalist activity, being essentially “rational,” tends to spread rational habits of mind and to destroy those loyalties and those habits of super- and subordination that are nevertheless essential for the efficient working of the institutionalized leadership of the producing plant: no social system can work which is based exclusively upon a network of free contracts between (legally) equal contracting parties and in which everyone is supposed to be guided by nothing except his own (short-run) utilitarian ends. Third, the concentration of the business class on the tasks of the factory and the office was instrumental in creating a political system and an intellectual class, the structure and interests of which developed an attitude of independence from, and eventually of hostility to, the interests of large-scale business. The latter is becoming increasingly incapable of defending itself against raids that are, in the short run, highly profitable to other classes. Fourth, in consequence of all this, the scheme of values of capitalist society, though causally related to its economic success, is losing its hold not only upon the public mind but also upon the “capitalist” stratum itself. Little time, though more than I have, would be needed to show how modern drives for security, equality, and regulation (economic engineering) may be explained on these lines. 30
CLASSIC READINGS IN ECONOMICS
The best method of satisfying ourselves as to how far this process of disintegration of capitalist society has gone is to observe the extent to which its implications are being taken for granted both by the business class itself and by the large number of economists who feel themselves to be opposed to (one hundred per cent) socialism and are in the habit of denying the existence of any tendency toward it. To speak of the latter only, they accept not only unquestioningly but also approvingly: (1) the various stabilization policies which are to prevent recessions or at least depressions, that is, a large amount of public management of business situations even if not the principle of full employment; (2) the “desirability of greater equality of incomes,” rarely defining how far short of absolute equality they are prepared to go, and in connection with this the principle of redistributive taxation; (3) a rich assortment of regulative measures, frequently rationalized by antitrust slogans, as regards prices; (4) public control, though within a wide range of variation, over the labor and the money market; (5) indefinite extension of the sphere of wants that are, now or eventually, to be satisfied by public enterprise, either gratis or on some post-office principle; and (6) of course all types of security legislation. I believe that there is a mountain in Switzerland on which congresses of economists have been held which express disapproval of all or most of these things. But these anathemata have not even provoked attack.
资本主义能生存吗？熊彼特回答 80 年后
https://www.aier.org/article/can-capitalism-survive-80-years-after-schumpeters-answer/?gad_source=
Richard M. EbelingRichard M. Ebeling – 2022 年 5 月 1 日
Richard M. Ebeling 是 AIER 高级研究员，也是南卡罗来纳州查尔斯顿西点军校的 BB&T 杰出伦理学和自由企业领导力教授。
Ebeling 从 2008 年到 2009 年住在 AIER 的校园里。
转载自未来自由基金会
八十年前，在第二次世界大战期间，奥地利出生的经济学家 Joseph A. Schumpeter 出版了他最著名的著作之一《资本主义、社会主义和民主》（1942 年）。他提出并试图回答的一个核心问题是“资本主义能生存吗？”他的基本结论是“不，我认为它不能”（第 61 页）。他（绝望地）相信可行的社会主义将取代市场社会。现在，在他得出这个结论 80 年后，我们能对资本主义的未来说些什么，或者，也许更确切地说，自由市场、自由经济体系的未来说些什么？
约瑟夫·阿洛伊斯·熊彼特于 1883 年 2 月 8 日出生在旧奥匈帝国，该地区现在是捷克共和国的一部分。第一次世界大战前几年，他就读于维也纳大学，是另一位著名的奥地利经济学家路德维希·冯·米塞斯的同学，也是奥地利经济学派早期领导人之一欧根·冯·庞巴维克的研究生研讨会同学。1919 年，他曾短暂担任战后新奥地利共和国政府的财政部长。 1925 年，他开始在德国波恩大学任职，1932 年转入哈佛大学任教，直到 1950 年 1 月 8 日去世，享年 66 岁。
企业家创新和创造性破坏过程
熊彼特在 28 岁时出版了《经济发展理论》（1911 年），一举成名。他将“企业家”定义为市场过程的核心和动态人物，他们引入变革性创新，从根本上改变经济活动的形式和方向。企业家通过向市场推出新的或显著改进的产品，或通过更好、更便宜的制造方式，或通过打开以前无法获得的资源或成品市场来实现这一点。企业家是积极经济变革的“破坏者”。
在《资本主义、社会主义和民主》一书中，熊彼特重申了这一论点，将企业家称为创造性破坏过程的发起者：
这一创造性破坏过程是资本主义的基本事实……启动和保持资本主义引擎运转的基本动力来自资本主义企业创造的新消费品、新的生产或运输方式、新市场、新的工业组织形式……因此，资本主义本质上是一种经济变革的形式或方法，它不仅永远不会静止，而且也永远不会静止（第 82-83 页）。
他还指出，经济学教科书中的标准“完全竞争”和“垄断”模型不仅不合适，而且对于理解、评估和判断市场经济的运作和意义来说基本上毫无用处。这些模型假设了一个没有时间或空间、知识和期望没有变化的世界。它们是“静态的”和人为的“机械的”，因为它们没有为代表“现实世界”资本主义运作的创新型企业变革留下任何空间。
动态、竞争的市场经济不应根据时间的冻结时刻来判断，而应视为一个跨越时间的创造性和创新过程，只有经过多年甚至几十年的观察才能最好地理解其全部背景。熊彼特宣称，当采取这种更广泛、更相关的视角时，几乎所有对资本主义制度的负面评价和批评都会不攻自破。
资本主义的经济和文化成就
纵观从十九世纪初到 1942 年出版其著作的近一个半世纪，熊彼特指出，商品和服务的产出急剧增加，包括 1790 年或 1810 年甚至最富有的国王和王子都买不到的新的和更好的商品。这种物质慷慨的涌现提高了更多人口的生活水平，主要受益者是现代西方社会中下层阶级和现在日益壮大的中产阶级，而且这一群体在世界各地也越来越多。
在此过程中，资本主义还发挥了巨大的“平衡器”作用，提高了所有人的经济福祉，同时也缩小了“富人”和其他人的生活质量差距。几年前少数人的奢侈品迅速成为理所当然的必需品
通过不断改进的大规模生产，资本主义为所有人的日常生活提供了便利。
熊彼特说，“资本主义文化”还消除了政治特权和偏袒，并日益促进了所有人，包括妇女、宗教和少数民族在法律面前的平等。资本主义用一种个人主义的伦理和政治取代了原始的部落和社会集体主义，这种伦理和政治建立了基于契约自由的个人权利、私有财产和人类交往的理想。
一年前，即 1941 年 3 月，熊彼特在马萨诸塞州波士顿的洛厄尔研究所发表了一系列演讲，在演讲中，他简明扼要地总结了竞争资本主义在 1870 年至 1914 年期间（他认为是其鼎盛时期）的政治和社会成功：
个人说、想和做自己喜欢的事情的自由也在非常广泛的范围内，这是普遍接受的。这种自由包括经济行动的自由：私有财产和继承、自由主动性和行为是该文明的基本要素。他们所称的政府干预，被认为只有在狭小的范围内才是合理的。国家必须为个人的生活提供最低限度的框架，而且必须以最低限度的支出来提供这一框架。廉价国家的理想自然地与这样的假设相辅相成，即税收应保持在一定的限度内，使商业和私人生活的发展方式与没有税收时大致相同……
商品的自由流动，即使有限制，也只受关税的限制；人员和资本的自由流动，原则上不容置疑；所有这些都由不受限制的黄金货币促成，并受到日益增多的国际法的保护，这些国际法原则上反对任何形式的武力或强迫，并支持和平解决国际冲突。
他补充说，因此，自由和竞争的资本主义社会理想是国际和平，反对战争和征服：“这种文明……不利于对国家荣耀、胜利等的崇拜……它计算了战争的代价，并不支持将荣耀视为一种资产。”
资本主义会自我毁灭吗？
然而，尽管这个世界充满了人类自由、个人权利、开放竞争机会、生活水平不断提高和法律面前人人平等的美好，熊彼特仍然坚信“资本主义”注定要灭亡。熊彼特经常喜欢悖论和讽刺。在这种情况下，他确信资本主义的成功创造了导致其灭亡的经济力量和社会因素。
熊彼特对卡尔·马克思着迷，并在《资本主义、社会主义和民主》的前 60 页中分析了马克思作为经济学家、社会学家和未来预言家的贡献。他认为马克思在很多事情上，甚至大多数事情上都是错误的。但作为未来的预测者，熊彼特认为马克思是正确的，但理由是错误的。资本主义将会消亡，并被某种形式的社会主义所取代，但这并不是因为“大众”日??益贫困或财富过度集中在越来越少的人手中。
在他看来，通过资本主义创新和大规模生产的竞争引擎，大众变得更加富裕，物质生活更加舒适。但是，大规模生产使大规模产出成为可能，这意味着企业家所有的企业正在被更加官僚管理的公司企业所取代，这破坏了个人创新企业家的精神、动力和存在。
这将破坏资本主义的个人主义文化。随着政府对大众社会所要求的“社会需求”承担更多的责任和指导，不露面的私营企业经理很容易转变为国有企业的经理。白手起家的资产阶级精神将在企业环境中消失，那些渴望并决心维护市场经济私有财产秩序的人也将随之消失。
知识分子的反资本主义
但在熊彼特看来，更重要的是现代知识分子阶层的崛起，他们是思想的二手交易者，与资本主义制度脱节，与资本主义制度格格不入，而资本主义制度的生产力使得社会中相当一部分人能够摆脱直接的商业和工作世界。大规模生产使得人们能够通过书面文字广泛且相对廉价地分享和表达思想。这反过来又为那些专门传播思想的人创造了一个赚钱的利基市场。熊彼特说：
我们发现知识分子处于完全前资本主义的条件下……但他们人数很少；他们是神职人员，大多是僧侣，他们的
只有极小一部分人口能够接触到书面表演……但是，如果说修道院是中世纪知识分子的诞生地，那么资本主义则让他们自由地发展，并为他们提供了印刷机……
上过大学的人很容易在心理上无法从事体力劳动，而不一定能在专业工作中获得就业能力……他们构成了严格意义上的知识分子大军，而且人数的增长速度不成比例。他们带着一种彻底不满的心态进入这个大军。不满滋生怨恨。
它常常将自己合理化为社会批评……这是知识分子观众对人、阶级和机构的典型态度……知识分子群体的作用主要在于刺激、激发、表达和组织这些材料（反资本主义情绪和怨恨）。知识分子群体不由自主地蚕食着……资本主义社会的基础……因为它依靠批评而生存，其整个地位都依赖于尖锐的批评……随着资本主义发展的每一个成就，这种敌意不但没有减少，反而增加了……
知识分子很少进入职业政治，更不用说攻占了负责任的职位。但他们为政治局任职，撰写党的小册子和演讲稿，担任秘书和顾问，为个别政客的报纸树立名声，虽然这不是全部，但很少有人能忽视。在做这些事情时，他们在某种程度上把自己的心态影响到几乎所有正在做的事情上（第 151-154 页）。
熊彼特的愤世嫉俗的悲观主义——他认为这是冷静、客观的观察——使他在《资本主义、社会主义和民主》中写到了一个著名的段落，他在其中得出结论：“资本主义在法官面前接受审判，法官手里拿着死刑判决书。无论他们听到什么辩护，他们都会通过它；成功辩护可能产生的唯一结果就是起诉书的改变”（第 144 页）。
资本主义的案例和公民的短期观点
但是，相对自由、竞争的资本主义为广大公民提供了物质改善和社会收益，这又如何呢？当然，作为市场经济带来的慷慨的受益者，普通公众会看穿知识分子和其他不喜欢市场社会的人的负面和批判性言论。
唉，不，熊彼特说。人们需要具备经济学知识和认真考虑“长期”的视角才能充分认识到资本主义制度的好处，事实上，资本主义制度的优点，这一事实意味着资本主义的案例处于严重的劣势。熊彼特说：
资本主义的案例……永远不可能简单。广大民众必须拥有超出他们能力的洞察力和分析能力。为什么？几乎所有关于资本主义的胡言乱语都是由一些自称经济学家的人所支持的。
但即使忽略这一点，理性地认识资本主义的经济表现及其对未来的希望也需要穷人几乎不可能实现的道德壮举。只有从长远来看，这种表现才会脱颖而出；任何支持资本主义的论点都必须建立在长期考虑的基础上……
为了认同资本主义制度，今天的失业者必须完全忘记他的个人命运，今天的政治家必须完全忘记他的个人野心…… 对于大众来说，重要的是短期观点。就像路易十五一样，他们觉得我们死后，洪水泛滥…… 被视为理所当然的世俗改善，加上令人强烈不满的个人不安全感，当然是滋生社会动荡的最佳配方（第 144-145 页）。
熊彼特的悲观并不意味着失败主义
自第一次世界大战之前，熊彼特就对社会主义无论是政治还是经济制度都没有任何同情——恰恰相反。事实上，当他的朋友在 1919 年问他为什么同意参加一个政府委员会，该委员会被任命来制定德国工业的“社会化”时，据报道熊彼特回答说：“如果有人决心自杀，那么至少应该有一名医生在场。”
此外，当他在 1946 年为《资本主义、社会主义与民主》第二版撰写新的序言时，他指出，他并不是要给人留下资本主义灭亡和社会主义胜利的“失败主义”印象。他说：
事实本身及其推论永远不会是失败主义或相反的，无论它是什么。一艘船正在沉没的报告不是失败主义。只有接受这份报告的精神才是失败主义的。
失败主义者。船员们可以坐下来喝酒。但也可以冲到加油站。如果船员们只是否认报告，尽管报告得到了仔细证实，那么他们就是逃避主义者……哪个正常人会仅仅因为他确信自己迟早都会死而拒绝保卫自己的生命呢？……坦率地陈述不祥的事实从未像今天这样必要，因为我们似乎已经将逃避主义发展成了一种思想体系（第 xi 页）。
在 1942 年出版《资本主义、社会主义和民主》之后的 80 年里，有 50 年的时间，冷战和苏联和共产主义中国等国家社会主义实践的现实，使现有的苏联式社会主义能否战胜美国式“资本主义”成为一个迫切的问题。虽然熊彼特也认为，一种带有经济计划的“民主”社会主义是可以想象的，但他隐含的假设是，某种形式的中央集权和独裁政治权力将伴随着战后的社会主义实践。因此，对于任何不是社会主义者并通过熊彼特的眼光看待世界的人来说，未来都是暗淡的。
“未来”并不像熊彼特担心的那样暗淡
然而，随着 1976 年毛主席去世后中国开始推行市场导向改革，以及 1991 年苏联解体，熊彼特的预测似乎已经搁置。社会主义中央计划已被否定，几乎每个人都清楚社会主义独裁的危险。当苏联从世界政治版图上消失时，“资本主义”在创造物质财富、提高生活水平、消除贫困以及产生惊人的企业创新方面似乎充满活力。
那么，在《资本主义、社会主义和民主》问世 80 年后，我们还能对约瑟夫·熊彼特的预测说些什么呢？熊彼特在书中说，如果社会主义能够从 20 世纪 40 年代开始再抵抗半个世纪，它将继续产生与过去一样惊人的经济改善。然而，他警告说，即使彻头彻尾的社会主义没有取代市场社会，资本主义制度也会被干预主义监管和削弱激励的税收削弱和蚕食。
幸运的是，即使面对监管和再分配的国家，市场经济仍然拥有足够的竞争开放性和盈利机会，因此在过去几十年中持续繁荣已成为现实。即使是最近，面对政府封锁和停工作为应对冠状病毒危机的政治和家长式反应，以及由于每年数万亿美元的赤字而不断增加的政府债务，剩余的市场竞争和开放程度和形式已经为社会中的许多人带来了恢复和改善的经济环境。但毫无疑问，足够的监管和财政负担仍然可能并且将会“杀死下金蛋的（市场）鹅”。
知识分子和对资本主义的新指控
那么，“资本主义”能够生存下来吗？这让我们想到了熊彼特故事中的另一个因素，即知识分子的作用和影响力——思想和舆论的塑造者和塑造者。不幸的是，社会主义和政治家长式思想并没有随着苏联社会主义的垮台而失败。相反，美国和其他国家的“进步”知识分子只是退回到学术殿堂和类似的地方，舔舐他们的意识形态伤口，重新表述他们对“资本主义”的控诉。
马克思主义式“阶级斗争”的公众吸引力可能已经失去了优势。但集体主义理论家已经重新包装了他们的政治信息，指责“资本主义”通过全球变暖摧毁了地球，并创造和延续了“白人特权”和“压迫所有有色人种”的“系统性种族主义”。
熊彼特曾担心“资本主义文化”的衰落和毁灭。也就是说，既包括以市场为基础的私有财产和自由交换制度，也包括资本主义“文明”无法生存的信念和态度。这种文化的基础是个人选择的个人主义和市场内外的机会自由，以及对平等和公正的法治的尊重和保护。这包括思想和言论自由以及对不同意见和价值观的容忍。
这正是社会主义和“进步”知识分子几十年来一直在“蚕食”的文化基础。而最新的变种不仅继续蚕食，而且公开、正面地挑战了美国建国的前提，坚持认为美国所表达的思想
《独立宣言》中提出的都是虚假和谎言，仅仅是“掩饰”了他们所说的美国建立在固有的、不可避免的种族主义之上。
“觉醒文化”是一种明确而激进的新反革命，旨在摧毁美国社会仍然存在的古典自由主义和自由市场对“资本主义”的理解的残余。我们在高等教育机构、大众媒体和越来越多的美国企业中都能看到这一点。后者是因为企业高管也和我们一样成为意识形态和教育潮流和宣传的受害者，或者试图驾驭新的政治浪潮，通过尽量减少被身份政治战士攻击和谴责的理由来维持或增加利润率。
面对新的集体主义，不要“失败主义”
那么，该怎么办呢？我们需要认真对待熊彼特的宣言。如果资本主义“船”似乎因为最近的反资本主义攻击而“沉没”，那么我们绝不能听天由命，坐以待毙，无计可施。相反，正如熊彼特所说，我们应该意识到形势，并“迅速行动”，为资本主义和以古典自由主义为基础的自由社会提供支持。
在过去的 100 年里，自由市场社会的思想和制度似乎注定要失败，但每次集体主义力量都未能实现其全部目标。确实，他们已经重组并重新组织了对自由社会剩余要素的下一次意识形态和政治攻击。但他们未能取得全面胜利，是因为幸存的市场自由主义思想一直存在着抵抗。
我们的任务是尽我们所能，重振人们对真正自由社会理想和实践的理解，激发人们维护、恢复和扩展这一理想和实践的愿望。但需要越来越多的人认识到非宿命论意愿的重要性，即“掌舵”，这样资本主义大船不仅能继续航行，还能在哲学和意识形态上得到比以往更牢固的重建。
Can Capitalism Survive? 80 Years After Schumpeter's Answer
Richard M. Ebeling, an AIER Senior Fellow, is the BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina.
Ebeling lived on AIER’s campus from 2008 to 2009.
Books by Richard M. Ebeling:
为了新自由主义
作者：Richard Ebeling（作者）2019 年 8 月 11 日
https://www.amazon.ca/New-Liberalism-Richard-Ebeling/dp/163069178X
在《新自由主义》中，Richard M. Ebeling 解释说，自由主义者认为，解放社会所有人的思想将在供需市场中产生创造性创新。
随着时间的推移，这些创新提高了所有人的生活质量和水平，而且比被限制在政府法规和控制范围内时要好得多，政府法规和控制限制了人们如何最好地发挥他们的才能，以及在他们认为最有吸引力的条件下发挥他们的才能。
Richard M. Ebeling 是 AIER 高级研究员，也是南卡罗来纳州查尔斯顿西点军校的 BB&T 杰出伦理学和自由企业领导力教授。 2008 年至 2009 年，埃贝林住在 AIER 校园里。
位于马萨诸塞州大巴灵顿的美国经济研究所成立于 1933 年，是美国第一个独立健全经济学的代言人。如今，它发表持续的研究成果，举办教育项目，出版书籍，赞助实习生和学者，是世界著名的巴斯夏学会和备受推崇的健全货币项目的所在地。美国经济研究所是一家 501c3 公共慈善机构。
For a New Liberalism
by Richard Ebeling (Author) Aug. 11 2019
https://www.amazon.ca/New-Liberalism-Richard-Ebeling/dp/163069178X
In “A New Liberalism,” Richard M. Ebeling explains that the liberal believes that the freeing of all the minds of society will produce the creative innovations in the marketplace of supply and demand.
Over time, these innovations improve the qualities and standards of living of all, and far better than when confined within the restrictions of government regulations and controls over how best men should apply their talents and on the terms they consider most attractive, all things considered.
Richard M. Ebeling, an AIER Senior Fellow, is the BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina. Ebeling lived on AIER's campus from 2008 to 2009.
The American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was founded in 1933 as the first independent voice for sound economics in the United States. Today it publishes ongoing research, hosts educational programs, publishes books, sponsors interns and scholars, and is home to the world-renowned Bastiat Society and the highly respected Sound Money Project. The American Institute for Economic Research is a 501c3 public charity.
Can Capitalism Survive? 80 Years After Schumpeter's Answer
Richard M. Ebeling, an AIER Senior Fellow, is the BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina.
Ebeling lived on AIER’s campus from 2008 to 2009.
Eighty years ago, in the midst of the Second World War, Austrian-born economist Joseph A. Schumpeter published one of his most famous books, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942). A central question that he asked and tried to answer was, “Can Capitalism Survive?” His basic conclusion was, “No, I do not think it can” (p. 61). He was (forlornly) confident that a workable socialism would replace the market-based society. Now, eight decades after he drew this conclusion, what can we say about the future of capitalism, or, perhaps, better phrased, the free-market, liberal economic system?
Joseph Alois Schumpeter was born on February 8, 1883, in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, in an area that is now a part of the Czech Republic. He attended the University of Vienna in the years before the First World War and was a classmate of another famous Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, in the graduate seminar of one of the early leaders of the Austrian School of Economics, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk. During 1919, he briefly served as minister of finance in the postwar government of the new Republic of Austria. He took up a position at the University of Bonn in Germany in 1925 and moved to Harvard University in 1932, where he taught until his death on January 8, 1950, at the age of 66.
Entrepreneurial innovation and the process of creative destruction
Schumpeter made a mark for himself when he was 28 years old with the publication of his book The Theory of Economic Development (1911). He defined “the entrepreneur” as the central and dynamic figure of the market process who introduces transformative innovations that radically change the forms and directions of economic activity. The entrepreneur does so by bringing to market new or significantly improved products, or by better and less expensive ways of undertaking manufacturing, or by opening previously unavailable markets for resources or finished goods. The entrepreneur is the “disrupter” for positive economic change.
In Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Schumpeter restated this argument, referring to the entrepreneur as the initiator of a process of creative destruction:
This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism…. The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in 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…. Capitalism, then, is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary (pp. 82–83).
He also pointed out that the standard economics textbook models of “perfect competition” and “monopoly” were not only misplaced but essentially useless for understanding, evaluating, and judging the workings and significance of the market economy. These models assume a world without time or space and without changes in knowledge and expectations. They were “static” and artificially “mechanical” in that they did not leave any room for the types of innovative entrepreneurial changes that represent the working of “real-world” capitalism.
The dynamic, competitive market economy needed to be judged not by frozen moments in time but rather as a creative and innovative process through time, the full context of which can be best appreciated only when looked at over years and even decades. When this wider and more relevant perspective is taken, virtually all of the negative assessments and criticisms of the capitalist system fall to the ground, Schumpeter declared.
Economic and cultural achievements of capitalism
Looking over the nearly century and a half from the start of the nineteenth century to his own time in 1942 when his book appeared, Schumpeter pointed to the dramatic increase in the output of goods and services, including new and better goods that were not available to even the wealthiest of kings and princes in, say, 1790 or 1810. This outpouring of material largess had raised the standards of living of a much larger population, with the main beneficiaries being the lower and now growing middle classes of modern Western society and increasingly around the world.
In doing this, capitalism was also serving as a great “leveler” that was raising the economic well-being of all, while also narrowing the differences in the quality of life between “the rich” and the rest. The luxuries of the few a mere handful of years ago rapidly became the taken-for-granted essentials of everyday life for all through ever-improving mass production.
The “culture of capitalism,” Schumpeter said, also had eliminated political privileges and favoritism and had increasingly fostered equality before the law for all, including women and religious and ethnic minorities. Capitalism replaced primitive tribal and social collectivism with an ethic and a politics of individualism that established the ideal of individual rights, private property, and human association based on freedom of contract.
A year earlier, in March 1941, Schumpeter delivered a series of lectures at the Lowell Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, in which he concisely summarized the political and social successes of competitive capitalism during the period of what he considered its heyday, between 1870 and 1914:
The freedom of the individual to say, think, and do what he pleased was also within very wide limits, generally accepted. This freedom included freedom of economic action: private property and inheritance, free initiative and conduct were essential elements of that civilization. What they characteristically called government interference was held to be justified only within narrow limits. The state had to provide a minimum of framework for the lives of individuals and this framework it had to provide with a minimum of expenditure. The ideal of the cheap state had its natural complement in the postulate that taxation should be kept within such limits that business and private life should develop in much the same way as they would have done if there had been no taxation at all….
Free movement of commodities, restricted if at all only by custom tariffs; freedom, unquestioned in principle, of migration of people and of capital; all facilitated by unrestricted gold currencies and protected by a growing body of international law that on principle disapproved of force or compulsion of any kind and favored peaceful settlement of international conflicts.
He added that the liberal and competitive capitalist social ideal, therefore, was one of international peace and against war and conquest: “That civilization … was not favorable to cults of national glory, victory, and so on…. It counted the cost of war and did not back the glory as an asset.”
Will capitalism destroy itself?
And, yet, in spite of this wondrous world of expanding human freedom, individual rights, open competitive opportunity, rising standards of living, and growing equality before the law, Schumpeter was persuaded that “capitalism” was doomed. Schumpeter was often fond of paradoxes and ironies. In this instance, he was convinced that the very successes of capitalism had created the economic forces and social factors that would bring about its demise.
Schumpeter was fascinated by Karl Marx and devoted the first 60 pages of Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy to an analysis of Marx as economist, sociologist, and prophesier of the future. He considered Marx to be wrong on many, if not most, things. But as a forecaster of the future, Schumpeter considered Marx to be right, but for the wrong reasons. Capitalism would pass away and be replaced by some type of socialism, but not due to growing immiseration of “the masses” or an exaggerated concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.
As he saw it, the mass of the population became wealthier and more materially comfortable through the competitive engine of capitalist innovation and large-scale production. But the mass production methods with which large-scale output was made possible meant that entrepreneurially owned business was being replaced by the more bureaucratically managed corporate enterprise that undermined the spirit and drive and existence of the individual innovative enterpriser.
This would undermine the individualist culture of capitalism. The faceless private corporate managers easily could be transformed into the managers of state enterprises as governments took more responsibility for and direction of the clamored-for “social needs” of mass society. The bourgeois spirit of self-made men would disappear in the corporate environment, and with it those who would desire and be determined to preserve the private property order of a market economy.
The anti-capitalism of the intellectuals
But more important, in Schumpeter’s view, was the rise of a modern intellectual class, the second-hand dealers in ideas who were disconnected from and alien to the capitalist system, the very productivity of which made it possible for a sizable segment of the society to be freed from the direct world of commerce and work. Mass production made it possible for the wide and relatively inexpensive sharing and expressing of ideas through the written word. This, in turn, created an income-earning niche for those who specialize in the dissemination of ideas. Said Schumpeter:
We find intellectuals in thoroughly pre-capitalist conditions…. But they were few in number; they were clergymen, mostly monks, and their written performance was accessible to only an infinitesimal part of the population…. But if the monastery gave birth to the intellectual of the medieval world, it was capitalism that let him loose and presented him with the printing press….
The man who has gone through college or university easily becomes psychically unemployable in manual occupations without necessarily acquiring employability in, say, professional work…. They swell the host of intellectuals in the strict sense of the term whose numbers increase disproportionately. They enter it in a thoroughly discontented frame of mind. Discontent breeds resentment.
And it often rationalizes itself into the social criticism which … is the intellectual spectator’s typical attitude toward men, classes and institutions…. The role of the intellectual group consists primarily in stimulating, energizing, verbalizing, and organizing this material [of anti-capitalist sentiments and resentments]…. The intellectual group cannot help nibbling … at the foundations of capitalist society … because it lives on criticism and its whole position depends on criticism that stings … [and] this hostility increases, instead of diminishing, with every achievement of capitalist evolution….
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 individual politician’s newspaper reputation which, though it is not everything, few men can afford to neglect. In doing these things they to some extent impress their mentality on almost everything that is being done (pp. 151–154).
Schumpeter’s cynical pessimism — which he considered dispassionate, objective observation — led him to a famous passage in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy in which he concluded that, “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 thing a successful defense can possibly produce is a change in the indictment” (p. 144).
The case for capitalism and the short-run view of the citizenry
But what of the material betterment and social gains that a relatively free, competitive capitalism has provided to the wide and general citizenry? Surely, the general public, the beneficiaries of the largess made possible by the market economy, would see through the negative and critical rhetoric of the intellectuals and others who dislike a market society.
Alas, no, Schumpeter said. The very fact that a knowledge of economics and a perspective that takes the “longer-run” into serious consideration is needed for people to fully appreciate the benefits and, indeed, the goodness of the capitalist system, means that the case for capitalism is at a serious disadvantage. Said Schumpeter:
The case for capitalism … could never be made simple. People at large would have to be possessed of an insight and a power of analysis which is altogether beyond them. Why, practically every nonsense that has ever been said about capitalism has been championed by some professed economist.
But even if this is disregarded, rational recognition of the economic performance of capitalism and of the hopes it holds out for the future would require an almost impossible moral feat by the have-not. That performance stands out only if we take a long-run view; any pro-capitalist argument must rest on long-run consideration….
In order to identify himself with the capitalist system, the unemployed of today would have to completely forget his personal fate and the politician of today his personal ambition…. For the masses, it is the short-run view that counts. Like Louis XV, they feel après nous, le déluge [after us, the flood]…. Secular improvement that is taken for granted and coupled with individual insecurity that is acutely resented is of course the best recipe for breeding social unrest (pp. 144–145).
Schumpeter’s gloom did not mean defeatism
It had been well known since before the First World War that Schumpeter had no sympathies for socialism as either a political or economic system — very much to the contrary. Indeed, when friends of his had asked him in 1919 why he had agreed to participate with a government commission appointed to work out the “socialization” of German industry, Schumpeter was reported to have replied, “If someone is determined to commit suicide, then a physician at least should be present.”
Furthermore, when he wrote a new preface for a second edition of Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy in 1946, he pointed out that he did not mean to create an impression of “defeatism” concerning the demise of capitalism and a triumph of socialism. He said:
Facts in themselves and inferences from them can never be defeatist or the opposite whatever that might be. The report that a given ship is sinking is not defeatist. Only the spirit in which this report is received can be defeatist. The crew can sit down and drink. But it can also rush to the pumps. If the men merely deny the report though it be carefully substantiated, then they are escapists…. What normal man will refuse to defend his life merely because he is quite convinced that sooner or later he will have to die anyhow?… Frank presentation of ominous facts was never more necessary than it is today because we seem to have developed escapism into a system of thought (p. xi).
For 50 of the 80 years that have followed the publication of Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy in 1942, the Cold War and the realities of socialism-in-practice in such countries as the Soviet Union and Communist China made it a burning issue whether existing Soviet-style socialism might triumph over American-style “capitalism.” While Schumpeter also had argued that a form of “democratic” socialism with economic planning was conceivable, his implicit assumption was that some form of centralized and dictatorial political power would accompany postwar instances of socialism-in-practice. Thus, the future looked grim for anyone who was not a socialist and looked at the world through Schumpeterian eyes.
The “future” was not as dim as Schumpeter feared
However, with the market-oriented reforms that were being introduced in China in the years after Chairman Mao’s death in 1976 and with the disappearance of the Soviet Union in 1991, Schumpeter’s projections seemed to have been put to rest. Socialist central planning had been discredited, and the dangers from socialist dictatorship were plain to almost everyone. “Capitalism’s” vibrancy in creating material wealth, raising standards of living and ending poverty, and generating amazing entrepreneurial innovations seemed very much alive at the very time when the Soviet Union disappeared from the political map of the world.
So, what might we still say about Joseph Schumpeter’s projections, now, eight decades after Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy? Schumpeter said in the book that if socialism could be fended off for another half-century from the 1940s, it would continue to produce the same wondrous economic betterment that it had created in the past. He warned however, that even if out-and-out socialism did not replace the market society, the capitalist system would be weakened and eaten away at by interventionist regulation and incentive-weakening taxation.
Fortunately, even in the face of the regulatory and redistributive state, the market economy has still possessed enough competitive openness and profit-earning opportunity that continuing prosperity has been a reality during these decades. Even most recently, in the face of government lockdowns and shutdowns as the political, paternalistic response to the coronavirus crisis, and a growing mountain of government debt due to trillions-of-dollars of annual deficits, the remaining degrees and forms of market competition and openness have resulted in restored and improving economic circumstances for many in the society. But enough regulatory and fiscal burdens can and will, no doubt, still “kill the (market) goose that lays the golden eggs.”
The intellectuals and the new indictment of capitalism
So, can and will “capitalism” survive? This gets us to the other factor in Schumpeter’s story, that being the role and influence of the intellectuals — the molders and shapers of ideas and public opinion. The socialist and political paternalist ideas, unfortunately, were not defeated with the fall of Soviet socialism. Instead, the “progressive” intellectuals in the United States and other countries merely retreated back to the halls of academia and similar places to lick their ideological wounds and reformulate their indictment of “capitalism.”
The public appeal of Marxist-style “class warfare” may have lost its edge. But the collectivist ideologues have rebranded their political message by accusing “capitalism” of destroying the planet through global warming and by creating and perpetuating a “systemic racism” of “white privilege” and “oppression of all people of color.”
Schumpeter had feared for the decay and destruction of the “culture of capitalism.” That is, both the market-based institutions of private property and free exchange, and the beliefs and attitudes without which capitalist “civilization,” as he put it, could not survive. The foundation of this culture was based on an individualism of personal choice and freedom of opportunity both inside and outside the marketplace, and a respect for and protection of an equal and impartial rule of law. This included freedom of thought and speech and tolerance for differences of opinion and values.
This is the very cultural foundation that socialist and “progressive” intellectuals have been “nibbling” away at for decades. And the latest variation not only continues the nibbling away but openly and frontally challenges the premises upon which the United States was founded by insisting that the ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence are a sham and a lie, a mere “cover” for the inherent and inescapable racism on which the country, they say, has been built.
“Woke culture” is the explicit and aggressive new counter-revolution out to destroy the remnants of the classical-liberal and free-market understanding of “capitalism” that still exists in American society. We see it in the institutions of higher learning, in the mass media, and in a growing part of corporate America. The latter is due to corporate executives also being victims of the same ideological and educational currents and propaganda as the rest of us, or on the basis of trying to ride a new political wave to maintain or increase profit margins by minimizing reasons to be attacked and condemned by the identity politics warriors.
Do not be “defeatist” in the face of the new collectivisms
So, what is to be done? We need to take Schumpeter’s declaration seriously. If the capitalist “ship” seems to be “sinking” due to this latest anti-capitalist attack, we must not allow ourselves to be fatalistic and defeatist, sitting back and wringing our hands that there is nothing to be done. Instead, as Schumpeter said, we should appreciate the situation and “rush to the pumps” to shore up the case for capitalism and the classical liberal–based free society in general.
The last 100 years have seen more than one instance in which it seemed that the ideas and institutions of the free-market society were heading for inescapable defeat, but each time the collectivist forces have failed to achieve their full objectives. True enough, they have regrouped and reorganized their next ideological and political assault on the remaining elements of a free society. But their failure to gain full victory has been due to the resistance of the surviving ideas of market liberalism that have endured.
Our task is to do all in our power and ability to revive an understanding of and inspire a desire to preserve, restore, and extend the ideal and practice of the truly free society. But it will take a growing number of us to see the importance of the non-fatalistic willingness to “man the pumps” so the capitalist ship can not only stay afloat but also be philosophically and ideologically rebuilt even more firmly than it ever was before.
