Schumpeter [was "An end to history?"]

hoov hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us
Fri Aug 21 13:13:18 PDT 1998



> Would others agree that Schumpeter was a "conservative economist"?
> Tony
>
> James Farmelant wrote:
> > The conservative economist Joseph
> > Schumpeter once characterized capitalism as a process of creative
> > destruction.

well, S's suggestion that capitalism was developing into a form of socialism had nothing to do with the spread of democracy from politics to the economy...sometimes called a 'bourgeois marxist' - although 'disenchanted bourgeois' in the line of Weber's concern about the trend toward rationalization in modern society is more apropos - S's socialism involved a technocratic transformation of bourgeois class rule...

S's conception of democracy replaces popular self-government with 'democratic elitism' - government carried out by a self-selected group of politicians who compete for the votes of an otherwise disengaged public...S - and the 'pluralists' who followed him in the 50s - devalues participation in favor of 'functional' apathy...Michael Hoover



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