A Vision for a Dynamic World Reading Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy for Today

This paper was written for a symposium on "Reconsidering the Classics." Rereading Joseph Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (CSD) for today, we argue Schumpeter's vision for a dynamic world remains essential for understanding the world. We begin the paper by briefly describing some background on Schumpeter and the context in which CSD was written. Then, we summarize the book, which Schumpeter divided into five separate parts on Marx, capitalism, socialism, democracy, and a history of socialist parties. Throughout our summary, we highlight the key arguments and touch on many ideas in the book, such as Schumpeter's description of socialism and his theory of democracy. Instead of tackling all these ideas in depth, we discuss the book's usefulness for readers today by focusing on Schumpeter's Big Idea--"creative destruction." We conclude by discussing how influential CSD has been, and continues to be, in the social sciences and then provide suggestions for those interested in reading CSD today.