> I  
> cannot imagine one claiming that Austrians,  
> Schumpeter in particular, were  
> interventionist. Could you document your claim,  
> please?  
  
It was not my claim, but it is easy to support it.  
Schumpeter (1942) argued that socialism could work and  
that capitalism would be undone by its own critical  
rationalism.   
Doug MacKenzie  
  
  
I am puzzled by the sense I am getting from couple of the posts that Schumpeter was  
an Austrian economist. Wasn't he that only by birth and not by his belonging to the  
Austrian school? This is what the Wikipedia encyclopedia entry on him starts out  
saying:  
   
Joseph Alois Schumpeter (February 8, 1883 – January 8, 1950) was an Austrian  
economist (though not an 'Austrian economist' in the sense of being a member of the  
Austrian School of economics) and a giant in the history of economic thought.  
   
Secondly, his argument that socialism will prevail in the long run could hardly be  
construed as interventionist in the usual sense. It was the logical conclusion he  
reached based on his analysis of capitalism and the critical rationalism it  
fostered. I thought it was was neither an endorsement, nor a lament.  
   
And didn't he differ from many mainstream economists in claiming the the Great  
Depression would have ended by running its course because the spent capacity would  
eventually lead to stimulating investment as a natural course?   
   
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believed that Schumpeter did not belong to  
any particular school, and neither did he found one. In that he was truly unique.  
  
Sumitra Shah