Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung

Abstract

Based on the exposition of the first chapter, we approach the problem of economic development. By " development " we shall understand only such changes in economic life as are not forced upon it from without, but arise by its own initiative from within. 1 Should it turn out that there are no such changes arising in the economic sphere itself, and that the phenomenon that we call economic development is in practice simply founded upon the fact that the data change and that the economy continuously adapts itself to them, then we should say that there is no economic development. 2 By this we should mean that economic development is not a phenomenon to be explained econom-ically, but that the economy, in itself without development, is dragged along by the changes in the surrounding world, that the causes and hence the explanation of development must be sought outside the group of facts which are described by economic theory. This might suffice as a preliminary introduction of the notion of development. What follows will gradually add further content to this notion while *The authors are very grateful to Duncker & Humblot for their kind help and the permission to print the selected passages of Schumpeter's (1911) Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung. the last chapter [Chapter 7] returns to an overview of economic devel-opment as a whole. It should be noted in passing that neither will the mere growth of the economy, as shown by the growth of population and wealth, be designated here as a process of development. For it calls forth no qualitatively new phenomena, but only processes of adaptation of the same kind as the changes in the natural data. 3 Since we wish to direct our attention to other phenomena, we shall regard such increases as changes in data. 4 Of course this requires justification. This is provided in detail in the following. For the time being I ask the reader to note this proposition and refrain from passing judgement until later. So far, we have described the economic process as determined by given circumstances. That is, we have made clear how economic be-haviour appears when people draw the consequences of given cir-cumstances, aiming at the best possible satisfaction of their wants. The economy would thus be unchanging if its data were unchanging. Now I would like to present a second type of economic behaviour describ-ing a new and independent agens in the economy, namely creative construction in the economic sphere. 5 Passively " drawing conse-quences " is not the only possible economic behaviour. You can also try and change the given circumstances. If you do that, you do some-thing not yet contained in our representation of Reality, something that must bring about distinct phenomena. 6 To state it right away, striving for the satisfaction of wants, however, is not the only goal of economic behaviour, not its only motive. There is also another mo-tive. If true, phenomena will appear that so far are missing in our rep-resentation. We will see that both elements are united in one type of economic behaviour, the investigation of which provides the explana-tion of the particular phenomena missing in our picture. 7 What we are about to face now is a discussion of fundamental im-portance to us. To facilitate this and get a clear and sharp focus on our chosen subject matter, we want to maintain the static assumptions in any other respect. In general, we start from a static economy and then introduce our new agens, so that it stands out in all its aspects. 8 We will assume that population as well as political and social organisation etc. is constant, i.e., the lack of all changes apart from those we are