Profit of Innvation? Schumpeter and Classical Sociology

The Austrian theorist Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) is not generally included

in discussions of classical sociology, although he was part of the political generation

that included Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Gustav von Schmoller and the German

Historical School. An economic theorist whose project was to synthesize insights

from sociology, social psychology, and cultural and historical studies of economics,

he has perhaps not been centrally established within any disciplinary boundary.

His best-known work, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), has been

read more in political science and sociology than economics, and for a long time

his work was eclipsed by his contemporary and rival, John Maynard Keynes.

However, Schumpeter’s works, and especially his concept of ‘creative destruction’,

are currently receiving enthusiastic interest in business schools, which is illustrated

by Thomas McCraw’s major intellectual biography (Professor of Business History

in the Harvard Business School). McCraw’s volume is scholarly, thorough and

systematically grounded in a comprehensive range of Schumpeter’s published

works, personal papers and diaries as well as the recollections of both colleagues and

intimate friends. This was possible in part because, after his death, Schumpeter’s

widow and co-researcher, Elizabeth Boody, donated to Harvard his personal

papers unexpurgated (p. 494). McCraw’s study is bursting with documentation,

anecdotes and elaboration, and there is no sign here of the alleged decline and

fall of annotation – of the 700 odd pages, around 200 are endnotes, which will probably please some and annoy others, although the endnote material is often

essential reading.