DID SCHUMPETER CHANGE HIS MIND? NOTES ON MAX WEBER'S INFLUENCE ON SCHUMPETER

The paper reviews Schumpeter's main works in order to reconstruct some lines of his methodological evolution. The young Schumpeter was influenced by Weber's methodological writings, which were critical of the German Historical School. In Schumpeter's first book, Epochen... (1908), the Weberian concept of Wertfreiheit (freedom from evaluation) allows Schumpeter to stress the non-normative character of economic science. The subsequent Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung (1912) is also influenced by Weber. The Kreislauf (circular flow) is an Idealtypus (ideal type) in the Weberian sense; also apparently taken from Weber are the hedonistic or "rational" motives which animate the Kreislauf. In the inter-war period, while the two sociological essays on imperialism still continued to use Weber's concepts of Idealtypus and rationality, Schumpeter's reflections on econometrics and above all his Business cycles (1939) show a sort of uncertainty between an empiricist attitude towards research, not in contradiction with Weber, and an "historicist" and Idealist approach to economics. In History of Economic Analysis (1954) Weber's lesson is dismissed. Instead of defining economic science through the rationality of economic agents, Schumpeter adopts an objectivist approach. Among the techniques of economic "analysis" he includes economic history, positively reappraising the German Historical School. Similarly, Weber's Wertfreiheit seems to be abandoned, since Schumpeter argues that "vision" interferes to some extent with "analysis". This interference, however, may lead to the "Ricardian vice", i. e. the false belief that abstract scientific propositions are immediately suitable for resolving practical problems. This approach, by which economic science is annihilated and turned into political action, was mainly followed by John Maynard Keynes.