Joseph A. Schumpeter, Eine „dynamische“ Theorie des Kapitalzinses. Eine Entgegnung (1913)

Schumpeter’s article is a rejoinder to Böhm-Bawerk’s criticism of the interest theory developed in his Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung. Its purpose is deliberately restricted: to rebut charges of technical error and internal contradiction, rather than establish his entire account of capitalist development anew. He distinguishes the validity of his central ideas from the adequacy of their presentation, and Böhm-Bawerk’s authoritative rejection from the particular arguments supporting it. The four numbered sections move from a restatement of the theory through comparison with Böhm-Bawerk and clarification of “statics” and “dynamics” to a detailed defence against logical and empirical objections.

The central question is not why someone in temporary need pays interest on a consumption loan, but why borrowing for production normally permits repayment of more purchasing power than was advanced. Schumpeter locates the source in new combinations of existing productive resources. Competition ordinarily brings costs and receipts into alignment; innovation temporarily interrupts that adjustment and creates entrepreneurial profit. Demand for the means of realizing such profits gives present purchasing power its premium over future purchasing power.

Danach würde, wenn die Volkswirtschaft stille stünde und keine neuen Unternehmungen gegründet würden, das Zinsphänomen in seiner gegenwärtigen Bedeutung verschwinden — es ist die Kapitalnachfrage seitens neuer Unternehmungen, die die Frage des relativen Wertes gegenwärtiger und künftiger Kaufkraft entscheidend zu Gunsten der ersteren löst.

English translation: Accordingly, if the economy stood still and no new enterprises were founded, the phenomenon of interest in its present significance would disappear — it is the demand for capital from new enterprises that decisively resolves the question of the relative value of present and future purchasing power in favour of the former.

The qualification “in its present significance” matters. Schumpeter is explaining productive interest as the basis of a social class and its income, not denying every possible payment called interest. Consumption loans, risk, and the transmission of an existing interest rate into otherwise stationary activities remain distinct considerations. Nor does he offer low yields on safe securities as positive proof: his example merely challenges the claim that a zero-interest stationary economy is obviously incompatible with experience.

Schumpeter presents his disagreement as a revision within Böhm-Bawerk’s theoretical framework. Both explain interest through exchange between present and future resources and through a premium in valuation:

Auch meine Zinstheorie ist eine Agiotheorie — auch nach ihr liegt dem Zins ein Wertagio zu Grunde.

English translation: My theory of interest is also an agio theory — according to it, too, interest rests on a premium in value.

He accepts unequal provision for wants in the present and future, Böhm-Bawerk’s first explanatory ground. He disputes the second, the psychological undervaluation of future satisfactions, as an independent foundation of interest, especially in an unchanged economic circuit. His treatment of the third ground, the productivity of time-consuming production methods, distinguishes their introduction from their subsequent repetition. Introducing a superior method can create a temporary surplus; once established, it induces adjustment in product and input values. The explanatory emphasis therefore shifts from elapsed time to entrepreneurial novelty, including commercial and technical changes that do not simply lengthen production.

The second conceptual move is to retain purchasing power, rather than subsistence goods, at the centre of the account. Schumpeter recognizes that workers must consume real goods during production, but denies that financing innovation necessarily presupposes deliberate saving for that innovation.

Es ist nicht nötig, daß irgend jemand die Genußgüter, deren die Arbeiter des Unternehmers bedürfen werden, respektive die zu ihrer Erzeugung nötigen Produktionsmittel, spart.

English translation: It is not necessary for anyone to save the consumption goods that the entrepreneur’s workers will need, or the means of production required to produce them.

Newly created bank purchasing power can redirect existing goods through price increases, a process he calls forced saving. This is not a denial of material constraints: inadequate supplies can raise prices sufficiently to prevent the proposed undertaking. His argument separates the physical availability of consumption goods from their prior accumulation specifically to support a new enterprise.

The discussion of statics defends an analytical distinction between routine reproduction and the carrying out of new combinations. A strict stationary model isolates the circuit’s essential conditions; broader applications include passive adjustment to changing population or resources. Schumpeter argues that varying the abstraction’s scope is legitimate if its conclusions remain applicable. Stationary and developmental currents can coexist within one economy, while depressions approximate, without fully attaining, the stationary condition.

The longest section explains how interest separates from entrepreneurial profit. Borrowing does not create an additional product value: the surplus exists whether the innovator owns or borrows the necessary resources. Credit instead enables a distinct claim upon that surplus.

So löst sich der Zins aus individuell stets verschiedenen Unternehmergewinnen ab.

English translation: Thus interest separates out from entrepreneurial profits that always differ from one individual case to another.

The capitalist’s service is to make command over resources available without a preceding productive performance by the entrepreneur. Ownership can unite the entrepreneurial and capitalist functions in one person, but does not erase their conceptual distinction. Conversely, development in a socialist or non-exchange economy can produce gains without generating a separate interest income. Continuing interest depends on resources repeatedly serving new undertakings, not on one innovation yielding a perpetual surplus.

Schumpeter also explains how an interest rate originating in development can penetrate stationary activities through alternative investment opportunities and the allocation of funds over time. This distinction between primary cause and transmitted effect answers apparent counterexamples involving houses, farms, and established businesses. His replies concerning land values, dividends, and the magnitude of capital demand likewise resist treating theory-dependent interpretations as indisputable facts. Entrepreneurial capacity admits degrees: pioneers prepare the way for less exceptional followers, whose demand expands as interest falls. Although he concedes the legitimacy and difficulty of empirical verification, he maintains that no demonstrated contradiction has displaced his thesis. The article’s significance lies in making productive interest dependent on continuing capitalist development while identifying the remaining disagreement over time preference and the independent explanatory power of production roundabouts.