Abstract
The consequences of the Great Depression led many, including writers and scholars, to believe that the capitalist system was doomed. The author summarises Joseph Schumpeter’s classic Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942) in which not only the term ‘creative destruction’ is elaborated but also capitalism’s built-in decline and fall. Schumpeter wonders whether socialism is a viable system to replace capitalism. It is, says Schumpeter, provided quite a few conditions to make it work are in place. The author also provides a summary of Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation (1944) in which Polanyi analyses capitalism’s annihilating tendency. Both summaries are preceded by biographies of Schumpeter and Polanyi.
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Notes
- 1.
Keynes, J.M. (1931) Essays in Persuasion: Politics. London: MacMillan & Co., 321.
- 2.
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 67. The edition used is the 12th impression of Unwin University Books (1970).
- 3.
The Worldly Philosophers, 303.
- 4.
Part V: A Historical Sketch of Socialist Parties has not been summarised. Schumpeter’s speech ‘The March into Socialism’ before the American Economic Association in New York on 30 December 1949 is included.
- 5.
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, ix.
- 6.
Ibid., 43.
- 7.
Ibid., 47.
- 8.
Ibid., 61.
- 9.
Ibid., 130.
- 10.
Ibid., 186.
- 11.
Ibid., 200.
- 12.
Ibid., 261.
- 13.
Ibid., 269.
- 14.
Ibid., 302.
- 15.
Ibid., 418.
- 16.
Ibid., 418–19.
- 17.
Drucker, P. (2007) Adventures of a Bystander. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers.
- 18.
North, D. (1977) Markets and Other Allocation Systems in History: The Challenge of Karl Polanyi. Journal of European Economic History 6 (Winter), 703–16.
- 19.
The edition I use here is the Beacon Press edition: (2001) The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon Press.
- 20.
The Great Transformation, 3.
- 21.
Ibid., 32.
- 22.
Ibid., 60.
- 23.
Ibid., 52–3.
- 24.
Adventures of a Bystander, 136
- 25.
Ibid., 137.
- 26.
Ibid., 228.
- 27.
Ibid., 268.
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de Haan, P. (2016). Capitalism or Socialism? That’s the Question. In: From Keynes to Piketty. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60002-8_3
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