Joseph Schumpeter
Joseph Alois Schumpeter was an Austrian political economist. He served briefly as Finance Minister of Austria in 1919. In 1932, he emigrated to the United States to become a professor at Harvard University, where he remained until the end of his career, and in 1939 obtained American citizenship.
Schumpeter was one of the most influential economists of the early 20th century, and popularized creative destruction, a term coined by Werner Sombart. His magnum opus is considered to be ''Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.''
Early life and education
Schumpeter was born in 1883 in Triesch, Habsburg Moravia, to German-speaking Catholic parents. Though both of his grandmothers were Czech, Schumpeter did not acknowledge his Czech ancestry. His father, who owned a factory, died when Joseph was only four years old. In 1893, Joseph and his mother moved to Vienna. Schumpeter was a loyal supporter of Franz Joseph I of Austria.Schumpeter was educated at the Theresianum and began his career studying law at the University of Vienna under Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, an economic theorist of the Austrian School. In 1906, he received his doctoral degree from the University of Vienna's faculty of law, with a specialisation in economics. In 1909, after some study trips, he became a professor of economics and government at the University of Czernowitz in modern-day Ukraine. In 1911, he joined the University of Graz, where he remained until World War I.
In 1913–1914, Schumpeter taught at Columbia University as an invited professor. This invitation marked, according to Wolfgang Stolper, the "high point of his worldly success". He taught economic theory and met Irving Fisher and Wesley Clair Mitchell. Columbia awarded him an honorary doctorate.
In 1918, Schumpeter was a member of the Socialisation Commission established by the Council of the People's Deputies in Germany. In March 1919, he was invited to take office as Minister of Finance in the Republic of German-Austria. He proposed a capital levy as a way to tackle the war debt and opposed the socialization of the Alpine Mountain plant. In 1921, he became president of the private Biedermann Bank. He was also a board member at the Kaufmann Bank. Problems at those banks left Schumpeter in debt. His resignation was a condition of the takeover of the Biedermann Bank in September 1924.
From 1925 until 1932, Schumpeter held a chair at the University of Bonn, Germany. He lectured at Harvard in 1927–1928 and 1930. In 1931, he was a visiting professor at the Tokyo College of Commerce. In 1932, Schumpeter moved to the United States, and soon began what would become extensive efforts to help fellow central European economists displaced by Nazism. Schumpeter's last visit to Europe was in 1937. Schumpeter also became known for his opposition to Marxism, although he still believed the triumph of socialism to be inevitable in the long run. He also criticized Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. In 1939, Schumpeter became a US citizen. At the beginning of World War II, the FBI investigated him and his wife, Elizabeth Boody for Nazi sympathies, but found no evidence of such leanings.
At Harvard, Schumpeter was considered a memorable character, erudite, and even showy in the classroom. He became known for his heavy teaching load and his personal and painstaking interest in his students. He served as the faculty advisor of the Graduate Economics Club and organized private seminars and discussion groups. Some colleagues thought his views were outdated by Keynesianism, which was fashionable; others resented his criticisms, particularly of their failure to offer an assistant professorship to Paul Samuelson, but recanted when they thought him likely to accept a position at Yale University. This period of his life was characterized by hard work and comparatively little recognition of his massive two-volume book Business Cycles. However, Schumpeter persevered, and in 1942 published what became the most popular of all his works, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, reprinted many times and in many languages in the following decades, as well as cited thousands of times.
Career
Influences
The source of Schumpeter's dynamic, change-oriented, and innovation-based economics was the historical school of economics. Although his writings could be critical of that perspective, Schumpeter's work on the role of innovation and entrepreneurship can be seen as a continuation of ideas originated by the historical school, especially the work of Gustav von Schmoller and Werner Sombart. Despite being born in Austria and having trained with many of the same economists, some argue he cannot be categorized with the Austrian School of economics without major qualifications while others maintain the opposite. Schumpeter was also influenced by Léon Walras and the Lausanne School, calling Walras the "greatest of all economists".The Austrian sociologist Rudolf Goldscheid's concept of fiscal sociology influenced Schumpeter's analysis of the tax state. A 2012 paper showed that Schumpeter's writings displayed the influence of Francis Galton's work.
Evolutionary economics
According to Christopher Freeman, "the central point of his whole life work : that capitalism can only be understood as an evolutionary process of continuous innovation and 'creative destruction'".''History of Economic Analysis''
Schumpeter's scholarship is apparent in his posthumous History of Economic Analysis, Schumpeter thought that the greatest 18th-century economist was Turgot rather than Adam Smith, and he considered Léon Walras to be the "greatest of all economists", beside whom other economists' theories were "like inadequate attempts to catch some particular aspects of Walrasian truth". Schumpeter criticized John Maynard Keynes and David Ricardo for the "Ricardian vice". According to Schumpeter, both Ricardo and Keynes reasoned in terms of abstract models, where they would freeze all but a few variables. Then they could argue that one caused the other in a simple monotonic fashion. This led to the belief that one could easily deduce policy conclusions directly from a highly abstract theoretical model.In this book, Joseph Schumpeter recognized the implication of a gold monetary standard compared to a fiat monetary standard. In History of Economic Analysis, Schumpeter stated the following: "An 'automatic' gold currency is part and parcel of a laissez-faire and free-trade economy. It links every nation's money rates and price levels with the money rates and price levels of all the other nations that are 'on gold.' However, gold is extremely sensitive to government expenditure and even to attitudes or policies that do not involve expenditure directly, for example, in foreign policy, certain policies of taxation, and, in general, precisely all those policies that violate the principles of liberalism. This is the reason why gold is so unpopular now and also why it was so popular in a bourgeois era."
Business cycles
Schumpeter's relationships with the ideas of other economists were quite complex in his most important contributions to economic analysis – the theory of business cycles and development. Following neither Walras nor Keynes, Schumpeter starts in The Theory of Economic Development with a treatise of circular flow which, excluding any innovations and innovative activities, leads to a stationary state. The stationary state is, according to Schumpeter, described by Walrasian equilibrium. The hero of his story is the entrepreneur.The entrepreneur disturbs this equilibrium and is the prime cause of economic development, which proceeds cyclically along with several time scales. In fashioning this theory connecting innovations, cycles, and development, Schumpeter kept alive the Russian Nikolai Kondratiev's ideas on 50-year cycles, Kondratiev waves.
Schumpeter suggested a model in which the four main cycles, Kondratiev, Kuznets, Juglar, and Kitchin can be added together to form a composite waveform. A Kondratiev wave could consist of three lower-degree Kuznets waves. Each Kuznets wave could, itself, be made up of two Juglar waves. Similarly two Kitchin waves could form a higher degree Juglar wave. If each of these were in phase; more importantly, if the downward arc of each was simultaneous so that the nadir of each was coincident, it would explain disastrous slumps and consequent depressions. As far as the segmentation of the Kondratiev Wave, Schumpeter never proposed such a fixed model. He saw these cycles varying in time – although in a tight time frame by coincidence – and for each to serve a specific purpose.
Keynesianism
In Schumpeter's theory, Walrasian equilibrium is not adequate to capture the key mechanisms of economic development. Schumpeter also thought that the institution enabling the entrepreneur to buy the resources needed to realize his vision was a well-developed capitalist financial system, including a whole range of institutions for granting credit. One could divide economists among those who emphasized "real" analysis and regarded money as merely a "veil" and those who thought monetary institutions were important and money could be a separate driving force. Both Schumpeter and Keynes were among the latter.Demise of capitalism
Schumpeter's most popular book in English is probably Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. While he agrees with Karl Marx that capitalism will collapse and be replaced by socialism, Schumpeter predicts a different way this will come about. While Marx predicted that capitalism would be overthrown by a violent proletarian revolution, which occurred in the least capitalist countries, Schumpeter believed that capitalism would gradually weaken itself and eventually collapse. Specifically, the success of capitalism would lead to corporatism and to values hostile to capitalism, especially among intellectuals."Intellectuals" are a social class in a position to critique societal matters for which they are not directly responsible and to stand up for the interests of other classes. Intellectuals tend to have a negative outlook on capitalism, even while relying on it for prestige because their professions rely on antagonism toward it. The growing number of people with higher education is a great advantage of capitalism, according to Schumpeter. Yet, unemployment and a lack of fulfilling work will lead to intellectual critique, discontent, and protests.
Parliaments will increasingly elect social democratic parties, and democratic majorities will vote for restrictions on entrepreneurship. Increasing workers' self-management, industrial democracy and regulatory institutions would evolve non-politically into "liberal capitalism". Thus, the intellectual and social climate needed for thriving entrepreneurship will be replaced by some form of "laborism". This will exacerbate "creative destruction", which will ultimately undermine and destroy the capitalist structure.
Schumpeter emphasizes throughout this book that he is analyzing trends, not engaging in political advocacy.
William Fellner, in the book Schumpeter's Vision: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy After 40 Years, noted that Schumpeter saw any political system in which the power was fully monopolized as fascist.