Schumpeter, Joseph Alois

Schumpeter, Joseph Alois

(1883–1950) economist; born in Triesch, Austro-Hungary. One of the greatest 20th-century economists, he was born and educated in Austria and served briefly there as the Minister of Finance. He emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1932, accepting a professorship at Harvard University. His early theorizing replaced Marx's view of greed-driven capitalism with dynamic, innovative entrepreneurship, clearly differentiating the capitalist from the entrepreneur. He published several books, although Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942) stands out as his masterpiece. In it, he rejects the Marxist diagnosis of the imminent breakdown of capitalism and at the same time predicts the almost inevitable emergence of socialism due to a betrayal of capitalist values by intellectuals of the western world. His final book, History of Economic Analysis (posthumously published in 1954), is considered a brilliant exposition of the history of economic thought.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.