Joseph A. Schumpeter, “C. A. Macartney. The Social Revolution in Austria.” (1927)

Schumpeter’s review of Macartney’s 1926 book combines appreciation of its account of Austrian Socialism with a fundamental objection to its historical framing. He opens with the unresolved problem of explaining both the Habsburg Monarchy’s progress between 1866 and 1914 and its collapse in 1918. Its disappearance from collective imagination is especially puzzling to him because, he argues, it had served the interests and commanded the allegiance of most of its inhabitants. This missing historical sociology supplies the review’s critical horizon, though Schumpeter does not expect Macartney’s compact study to provide it.

His central conceptual distinction is between revolution and collapse. Apart from the possible exception of Bolshevist Hungary, he finds the book’s title misleading:

In a political and in a social sense there was a breakdown—the former definitive, the latter temporary—under the pressure of suffering and defeat, but very little revolutionary impetus.

The distinction separates the irreversible destruction of the political order from a temporary disruption of social relations, while locating the immediate cause in wartime suffering and defeat rather than revolutionary agency.

Schumpeter follows the book’s chapter sequence, assessing its uneven historical authority. He praises the opening chapter’s fairness toward the dynasty, treats the second as a sketch of the Socialist party’s rise, and challenges the reliability of the third chapter’s account of dissolution. His correction of Macartney’s depiction of Count Stürgkh rests on personal knowledge: he rejects the portrayal of Stürgkh as a despot and interprets Adler’s assassination as an exemplary political act rather than retaliation for particular misconduct.

The review becomes most enthusiastic when it turns from imperial dissolution to Socialist government. After the fourth chapter’s account of the new republic, Schumpeter identifies the following two chapters as the book’s substantive achievement:

These two chapters are the centre of the book and may claim the attention of the specialist.

Austrian Socialism, he maintains, deserves attention disproportionate to the country’s size. Yet this praise also sets a higher evidentiary standard: the discussion of socialised undertakings needs fuller facts, and Vienna’s Socialist municipal administration deserves greater recognition for its financial success.

The closing assessment extends that demand for factual precision to agriculture and economic policy. Schumpeter corrects misleading impressions about large aristocratic estates and Church landholding, enjoys the humour of the final chapters, and asks for more explicit, better-supported judgments on industry, commerce, and finance. The review’s relevance lies in this combination of conceptual discrimination and empirical scrutiny: a sympathetic account of Socialist achievements remains valuable, but cannot by itself explain the monarchy’s fall or justify calling Austria’s postwar transformation a revolution.