joseph schumpeter

‘Can capitalism survive? No, I don’t think it can.’ This quote opens the prologue to a section of Joseph Alois Schumpeters book ‘Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy.’(1) On the basis of this one may assume that Joseph Alois Schumpeter was a Marxist*, Schumpeters reasoning differed very much from Karl Marx’s. Schumpeter believed that capitalism would destroy its successes whereas Karl Marx believed that capitalism would be destroyed by its enemies (the proletariat). (2)
Schumpeter did not relish the destruction of capitalism. Schumpeter, however, did believe that capitalism would spawn a large intellectual class. He believed that this class would make its living by attacking the very bourgeois system of private property and freedom. Which in contrary would be necessary for this intellectual class’s existence.
*A political theory-Marxism, which came as the thinkings of Karl Marx.
Karl Marx was a German living in London; he was trained in the Hegelian philosophy. He pr...