著者

小林 大州介

出版者

Hokkaido University(北海道大学)

巻号頁・発行日

2016

---

Hokkaido University(北海道大学). 博士(経済学)

著者

小林 大州介

出版者

経済学史学会

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.62, no.2, pp.1-25, 2020 (Released:2021-08-27)

---

In this paper, the author examines the contents of lectures given by A. C. Haddon, E. Westermarck, and Sydney Webb that Schumpeter attended at the London School of Eco-nomics (LSE) in 1907. This paper uses as references the syllabus of the LSE at that time and written works by the lecturers. Most research on the sources of Schumpeterʼs ideas on economic development and socioeconomics has been conducted based on discussions of Marxist economic thought, the German historical school, and American economists. Little attention has been accorded to the LSE lectures attended by Schumpeter. Consequently, essential parts of Schumpeterʼs history of economic thought have been ignored. This paper addresses that deficit. It has been established that Schumpeter attended lectures at the LSE on ethnology and sociology given by, respectively, Haddon and Westermarck. However, Schumpeter not-ed in a footnote in his posthumous History of Economic Analysis that he also attended Webbʼs lectures on “methods of social investigation.” The present author has previously demonstrated that the LSE lectures delivered by Haddon and Westermarck may have enabled Schumpeter to overcome outmoded ideas of “evolutionism” (which assumed autonomous development and unilineal developmental stages derived from the Enlightenment) and thoughts of “natural law.” Close examination of the lectures delivered at the LSE support the authorʼs previous hypothesis. Further, that examination reveals that Webbʼs lectures delivered in October 1907 could have exerted a defining impact on Schumpeterʼs thoughts on economics. For example, in Webbʼs lecture plans, such items as “The great man as a ferment” and “Possibility of predicting effects of a given social environment on average humans in the immediate future” can be found. Those lectures at the LSE include many key points related to Schumpeterʼs basic as-sumptions about dynamics and economic development. JEL classification numbers: B25, B31, Z13.

著者

小林 大州介

出版者

経済社会学会

雑誌

経済社会学会年報 (ISSN:09183116)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.37, pp.203-212, 2015 (Released:2016-03-25)

---

From the late eighteenth through the nineteenth century, the concept of ‘evolutionism’ had prevailed among social scientists in many fields, such as sociology, philosophy, history, economics, anthropology, ethnology and archaeology, as a framework of their research. One of the origins of this idea was the belief in ‘progress’ that characterized eighteenth century’s enlightenment thought. The evolutionists assumed that society, economy and culture progressed through a sequence of deterministic developmental stages, and always toward a completion of civilization. However, in the late nineteenth century, many objections to this notion of evolutionism emerged within the above academic fields, mainly in history and ethnology. Historians and ethnologists pointed out that evolutionism failed to offer an appropriate explanation for the complex and non-deterministic character of the historical process. Moreover, innovation theories, which came into existence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, largely rejected the idea of progress and evolutionism. In the present paper, the author argues that early innovation theorists, such as Gabriel Tarde and Joseph A. Schumpeter attempted to offer more general theories than the development stages theory, and to transcend the out-of-date ideas of the evolutionists.