38 pages • 1 hour read
Joseph Alois SchumpeterCapitalism, Socialism and Democracy
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1942A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 5: “A Historical Sketch of Socialist Parties”
Part 5, Prologue Summary
Schumpeter explains how he will sketch the development of socialist parties in Europe and the US. He also states that he will focus on parties that are Marxist in character.
Part 5, Chapter 24 Summary: “The Nonage”
Schumpeter discusses pre-Marxist socialism, often referred to as “utopian socialism.” The main problem with this type of socialism was that its ideas were “unimplemented and unimplementable” (306). Out of touch with social reality and any significant social movement, there was no perceivable process which would bring its ideas into being. Seminal figures in utopian socialism included Thomas Moore (1478-1535), with his Utopia (1516), and English socialist Robert Owen (1771-1858). Neither was able to show how existing society, or the forces within it, might lead toward the ideal societies they envisaged.
Nevertheless, Schumpeter argues that Marxists unduly dismissed utopian socialists. Utopian socialists paved the way for Marxism in articulating a dream and the mass’s hunger for change. Unlike Marx, they saw that it was not just the working classes who would be the prime movers in a socialist revolution, but governments and intellectuals.
