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Re: market "socialism," etc.



Ricardo quotes Schumpeter:

But here's Schumpeter himself, the one Austrian who was closest
to Marx: For Marx the capitalist economy "is incessantly being
revolutionized from within by new enterprise, i.e., by the intrusion of
new commodities or new methods of production or new commercial
opportunities into the industrial structure [...] This is how progress
comes about in capitalist society. In order to escape being
undersold, every firm is in the end compelled to follow suit, to
invest in its turn and, in order to be able to do so, to plow back part
of its profits, i.e., to accumulate. Thus, everyone else accumulates.
Now Marx saw this process of industrial change more clearly...than
any other economist of his time. This does not mean that he
correctly understood its nature or correctly analyzed its
mechanism. With him, *that mechanism resolves itself into mere
mechanics of masses of capital. He had no adequate theory of
enterprise and his failure to distinguish the entrepreneur from the
capitalist*, together with a faulty theoretical technique, accounts for
many cases of non sequitur and for many mistakes"

What "cases of non sequitur" and "mistakes" does Schumpeter have in mind?

When S says no adequate theory of enterprise he means that M
had no adequate theory of rational behavior. Marx has no concept
of rational action, his 'rational miser' is a mere personification of the
capitalist system.

Why "theory of enterprise" = "theory of rational behavior"?

Yoshie




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