Creative destruction
in economics, the linked processes of the accumulation and annihilation of wealth under capitalism
In economics, creative destruction (German: schöpferische Zerstörung) is a process in which new innovations replace and make older innovations obsolete.
The concept is usually identified with the economist Joseph Schumpeter, who derived it from the work of Karl Marx and popularized it as a theory of economic innovation and the business cycle. It is also sometimes known as Schumpeter's gale. In Marxian economic theory, the concept refers more broadly to the linked processes of the accumulation and annihilation of wealth under capitalism.
The German sociologist Werner Sombart has been credited with the first use of these terms in his work Krieg und Kapitalismus (War and Capitalism, 1913). In the earlier work of Marx, however, the idea of creative destruction or annihilation (Vernichtung) implies not only that capitalism destroys and reconfigures previous economic orders, but also that it must continuously devalue existing wealth (whether through war, dereliction, or regular and periodic economic crises) in order to clear the ground for the creation of new wealth.
In Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), Joseph Schumpeter developed the concept out of a careful reading of Marx's thought. In contrast with Marx – who argued that the creative-destructive forces unleashed by capitalism would eventually lead to its demise as a system – Schumpeter reinforced the evolutionary nature of capitalist economies, downplaying the concerns of static competition analysis (i.e., market concentration), and reinforcing the importance of dynamic competition analysis (i.e., threat of entry, new technologies and means of production, competition in dimensions different than price). In his words, "This process of Creative
Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in [...] The problem that is usually being visualized is how capitalism administers existing structures, whereas the relevant problem is how it creates and destroys them.
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