Joseph A. Schumpeter’s “Soziologie des Geldes”

Abstract

Several titles of publications by J. A. Schumpeter contain the word sociology , among others, the article to be discussed in the following that had been published posthumously in 1970 as the second chapter of the book Das Wesen des Geldes . The author’s main concern in this treatise was to express a specific view of economic issues contrary to the economic understanding of the marginalists as well as to the at this time dominating positivism. Schumpeter continued a tradition of economics close to social-science conceiving certain categories and perspectives as sociological. This is especially true for money that today almost exclusively is regarded as a quantitative issue without any attempt to explore its nature. In contrast, Schumpeter regards money as an element of the general social process (see p. 12) that means as a social-economic category and social institution (p. 206).