Joseph Schumpeter might have regretted describing the process of economic development as “creative destruction” had he known that disaster capitalists would misinterpret its meaning and invert cause and effect (Darroch’s fate is a taste of the chaos to come, Simon Jenkins, 12 July). Schumpeter described a process of innovation creating new market conditions which destroyed the old: where are the farriers, loco firemen, telephonists and typists now? For Schumpeter it was the creation that caused the economy to advance; the destruction was a regrettable consequence, not a cause of the innovation. “Destructive creation” would have put the emphasis on the substantive element of the process.
You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. But you must have a plan to create the omelette; you can’t just break some eggs and trust that an omelette will then appear as if by magic – unless of course, you live in the looking-glass world of Brexit.
Michael Heaslip
Workington, Cumbria
• As recounted by Simon Jenkins, the arch-Brexiters seem to misunderstand Schumpeter’s concept of “creative destruction”. Schumpeter criticised “wishful thinking” about “an entirely imaginary golden age of perfect competition”. He saw capitalism as an evolutionary process which is never stationary, involving new commodities, new technologies, methods of organisation, production, transportation and markets. These organic developments “revolutionize the economic structure from within incessantly destroying the old … this process of creative destruction is the essential fact about capitalism”.
Jenkins is right that the chaos relished by the Brexiters (wars, recessions, shocks to the system) is a real threat but it is not one Schumpeter would have favoured. These he would see as political choices, external to capitalism, and purely destructive – without any creative outcomes.
Susanne MacGregor
East Finchley, London
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