Professor Joseph Schumpeter, of Vienna, carries out economic abstractionism to its logical limits, both in "statics" and in "dynamics." For an estimate of his statics, _vide_ Professor Alvin S. Johnson's review of Schumpeter's _Das Wesen und der Hauptinhalt der theoretischen Nationalökonomie_ (Leipzig, 1908), in the _Journal of Political Economy_, 1909, pp. 363 et seq. His dynamics is also to be "_reinwirtschaftlich_." An essay in economic dynamics, the introduction to which sets forth his general point of view, appears in the Austrian _Zeitschrift für Volkswirtschaft_, etc., 1910, under the title, "Das Wesen der Wirtschaftskrisen." In this Professor Schumpeter narrows, by a process of exclusion, the conception of what would constitute a "pure economic" explanation of crises virtually to a pinpoint--and then fails to carry out his program of giving us a "_reinwirtschaftlich_" theory. For, in order to get any _periodicity_ into his economic movement, he is obliged to bring in, from the field of sociological theory, the factor of _imitation_--he does not use the term, imitation, though he does use the verb, "_kopieren_." (_Vide_ esp. pp. 298-99.) Professor Schumpeter very explicitly recognizes the existence of factors other than the "_reinwirtschaftlich_," but counts them as "external" factors.
[172] Cf. Professor Marshall's discussions in his sections on economic law and method, and Professor Davenport's classification of the factors in the economic environment (_Value and Distribution_, pp. 514-15).
[173] The danger of the abstract individualistic study, from the entrepreneur's viewpoint--a useful enough method within limits--is well illustrated by Professor Davenport's contention that "men as employees are passive facts, mere agents under the direction of managing producers, and are therefore only potentially directing forces. The problem of production and of marginalship is, accordingly, an entrepreneur problem." (_Op. cit._, p. 279, n.) This is set forth as a limitation on the doctrine, stated in the paragraph which precedes it, that "man is to be conceived as the subject and centre of economic science, etc." Surely Professor Davenport's contention is an impossible abstraction from the rich facts of social control. The managing entrepreneur knows better, when he deals with union rules and walking delegates. And the economist, tracing the subtler forces that underlie values, and so motivate the direction of industry, should know more, rather than less, than the entrepreneur.