Editing Creative destruction (section)

=== 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>