Editing Creative destruction (section)

==History==

=== In Marx's thought ===
Although the modern term "creative destruction" is not used explicitly by Marx, it is largely derived from his analyses, particularly in the work of [[Werner Sombart]] (whom Engels described as the only German professor who understood Marx's ''Capital''),<ref>{{Cite journal |first=Abram L. |last=Harris |title=Sombart and German (National) Socialism |journal=[[Journal of Political Economy]] |volume=50 |issue=6 |year=1942 |pages=805–35 [p. 807] |doi=10.1086/255964 |jstor=1826617 |s2cid=154171970 }}</ref> and of Joseph Schumpeter, who discussed at length the origin of the idea in Marx's work (see below).

In ''[[The Communist Manifesto]]'' of 1848, [[Karl Marx]] and [[Friedrich Engels]] described the crisis tendencies of capitalism in terms of "the enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces":
<blockquote>Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. ... It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the whole of bourgeois society on trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, ''a great part not only of existing production, but also of previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed''. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity – the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions. ... And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by ''enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces''; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.<ref name="isbn0-14-044757-1" /></blockquote>
A few years later, in the ''Grundrisse'', Marx was writing of "the violent destruction of capital not by relations external to it, but rather as a condition of its self-preservation".<ref name="isbn0-14-044575-7" /> In other words, he establishes a necessary link between the generative or creative forces of production in capitalism and the destruction of capital value as one of the key ways in which capitalism attempts to overcome its internal contradictions:
<blockquote>These contradictions lead to explosions, cataclysms, crises, in which ... momentaneous suspension of labour and annihilation of a great portion of capital ... violently lead it back to the point where it is enabled [to go on] fully employing its productive powers without committing suicide.<ref name="isbn0-14-044575-7" /><ref name="Elliott1978-79">For further discussion of the concept of creative discussion in the Grundrisse, see {{Cite journal | last1 = Elliott | first1 = J. E. | title = Marx's "Grundrisse": Vision of Capitalism's Creative Destruction | jstor = 4537475 | journal = Journal of Post Keynesian Economics | volume = 1 | issue = 2 | pages = 148–69 | year = 1978 | doi = 10.1080/01603477.1978.11489107 }}</ref></blockquote>
In the ''Theories of Surplus Value'' ("Volume IV" of ''[[Das Kapital]]'', 1863), Marx refines this theory to distinguish between scenarios where the destruction of (commodity) values affects either use values or exchange values or both together.<ref name="isbn1-84467-095-3"/> The destruction of exchange value combined with the preservation of use value presents clear opportunities for new capital investment and hence for the repetition of the production-devaluation cycle:
<blockquote>the destruction of capital through crises means the depreciation of values which prevents them from later renewing their reproduction process as capital on the same scale. This is the ruinous effect of the fall in the prices of commodities. It does not cause the destruction of any use-values. What one loses, the other gains. Values used as capital are prevented from acting again as capital in the hands of the same person. The old capitalists go bankrupt. ... A large part of the nominal capital of the society, i.e., of the exchange-value of the existing capital, is once for all destroyed, although this very destruction, since it does not affect the use-value, may very much expedite the new reproduction. This is also the period during which moneyed interest enriches itself at the cost of industrial interest.<ref>{{Cite book
|last=Marx
|first=Karl
|author-link=Karl Marx
|title=Theories of Surplus-Value: "Volume IV" of Capital
|volume=2
|pages=495–96
|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sU23AAAAIAAJ
|year=1969
|publisher=Lawrence & Wishart
|isbn=9780853151944
|orig-year=1863
}} For further explanation of these quotations see {{cite book
|author=Harvey, David
|author-link=David Harvey (geographer)
|title=Limits to Capital
|publisher=Verso
|year=2007
|orig-year=1982
|isbn=978-1-84467-095-6
|url=https://archive.org/details/limitstocapital00davi
|url-access=registration
|pages=[https://archive.org/details/limitstocapital00davi/page/200 200]–03
}}</ref></blockquote>
Social geographer [[David Harvey (geographer)|David Harvey]] sums up the differences between Marx's usage of these concepts and Schumpeter's: "Both Karl Marx and Joseph Schumpeter wrote at length on the 'creative-destructive' tendencies inherent in capitalism. While Marx clearly admired capitalism's creativity he ... strongly emphasised its self-destructiveness. The Schumpeterians have all along gloried in capitalism's endless creativity while treating the destructiveness as mostly a matter of the normal costs of doing business".<ref name="isbn1-84668-308-4">{{cite book|author=Harvey, David|author-link=David Harvey (geographer)|title=The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism|publisher=Profile Books|location=London|year=2010|page=46|isbn=978-1-84668-308-4|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ww1dPgAACAAJ|access-date=2010-11-10}}{{Dead link|date=December 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

=== Other early usage ===
[[File:Shiva as the Lord of Dance LACMA edit.jpg|thumb|In [[Hinduism]], the god [[Shiva]] is simultaneously destroyer and creator, portrayed as ''[[Shiva Nataraja]]'' (Lord of the Dance), which is proposed as the source of the Western notion of "creative destruction".<ref name="reinert" />]]
In the ''[[Origin of Species]]'', which was published in 1859, [[Charles Darwin]] wrote that the "extinction of old forms is the almost inevitable consequence of the production of new forms."  One notable exception to this rule is how the extinction of the dinosaurs facilitated the [[adaptive radiation]] of mammals.  In this case creation was the consequence, rather than the cause, of destruction.

In philosophical terms, the concept of "creative destruction" is close to [[Hegel]]'s concept of [[Aufheben|sublation]]. In German economic discourse it was taken up from Marx's writings by [[Werner Sombart]], particularly in his 1913 text ''Krieg und Kapitalismus'':<ref>{{cite book |last=Sombart |first=W. |author-link=Werner Sombart |year=1913 |title=Krieg und Kapitalismus |trans-title=War and Capitalism |location=Leipzig |publisher=Duncker & Humblot |page=[https://archive.org/details/kriegundkapitali00sombuoft/page/207 207] |isbn=9780405065392 |url=https://archive.org/details/kriegundkapitali00sombuoft }}</ref>
<blockquote>Again, however, ''from destruction a new spirit of creation arises;'' the scarcity of wood and the needs of everyday life... forced the discovery or invention of substitutes for wood, forced the use of coal for heating, forced the invention of coke for the production of iron.</blockquote>
Hugo Reinert has argued that Sombart's formulation of the concept was influenced by [[Eastern mysticism]], specifically the image of the [[Hindu]] god [[Shiva]], who is presented in the paradoxical aspect of simultaneous destroyer and creator.<ref name="reinert" /> Conceivably this influence passed from [[Johann Gottfried Herder]], who brought Hindu thought to German philosophy in his ''Philosophy of Human History'' (Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit) (Herder 1790–92), specifically volume III, pp.&nbsp;41–64.<ref name="reinert" /> via [[Arthur Schopenhauer]] and the [[oriental studies|Orientalist]] [[Friedrich Maier]] through [[Friedrich Nietzsche]]´s writings. Nietzsche represented the creative destruction of modernity through the mythical figure of [[Dionysus]], a figure whom he saw as at one and the same time "destructively creative" and "creatively destructive".<ref>{{Cite book
| publisher = Penguin
| last1 = Bradbury
| first1 = Malcolm
| author1-link = Malcolm Bradbury
| last2 = McFarlane
| first2 = James
| author2-link = James McFarlane
| title = Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890–1930
| location = Harmondsworth, UK
| isbn = 978-0140138320
| year = 1976
| page = 446
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=YMWzAAAAIAAJ
}}</ref> In the following passage from ''[[On the Genealogy of Morality]]'' (1887), Nietzsche argues for a universal principle of a cycle of creation and destruction, such that every creative act has its destructive consequence:
<blockquote>But have you ever asked yourselves sufficiently how much the erection of every ideal on earth has cost? How much reality has had to be misunderstood and slandered, how many lies have had to be sanctified, how many consciences disturbed, how much "God" sacrificed every time? If a temple is to be erected a temple must be destroyed: that is the law – let anyone who can show me a case in which it is not fulfilled! – [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], ''[[On the Genealogy of Morality]]''</blockquote>

Other nineteenth-century formulations of this idea include Russian [[anarchist]] [[Mikhail Bakunin]], who wrote in 1842, "The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!"<ref>[http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1842/reaction-germany.htm The Reaction in Germany, From the Notebooks of a Frenchman], October 1842</ref> Note, however, that this earlier formulation might more accurately be termed "destructive creation",{{Original research inline|date=July 2014}} and differs sharply from Marx's and Schumpeter's formulations in its focus on the active destruction of the existing social and political order by human agents (as opposed to systemic forces or contradictions in the case of both Marx and Schumpeter).