Schumpeter's general theory of social evolution: the early version

The recent neo-Schumpeterian and evolutionary economics appears to cover a much smaller range of topics than Joseph Schumpeter confronted. Thus, it has hardly been recognised that Schumpeter wanted to develop a general theory that served the analysis of evolution in any sector of social life as well as the analysis of the evolution of social life as a whole. This paper demonstrates this ambition by studying his first two books (from 1908 and 1912, partly available in recent English translations). Schumpeter's starting point was the Walrasian System, which he generalised for the study of any sector of social life. Schumpeter's elitist Vision of all types of social change drove this generalisation, but it is his emphasis on moving from Vision to Analysis that gives current value to his early work.