Max Weber vs. Josef Schumpeter: Today's Economic History
*: "'The conversation turned to the Russian revolution...
...and Schumpeter expressed his satisfaction that socialism is no longer a paper discussion but had to demonstrate its viability. Weber grew rather excited and declared that Communism at Russia’s stage of development was quite simply a crime…’ the road would pass through untold human suffering and end in a terrible catastrophe.
‘That may be so,’ Schumpeter said, ‘but it will be a nice little experiment for us.’
‘A laboratory with heaps of human corpses,’ Weber specified.
‘All anatomy is like that,’ Schumpeter came back….
Weber flared up and spoke more loudly. Schumpeter more softly and sarcastically, while all around them the coffee-house customers interrupted their card game and listened to them with curiosity, until Weber jumped up and hurried out to the Ringstrasse with the words, ‘That’s more than anyone can take…’
From Radkau’s biography and various other sources.
Cf: : Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century Europe; : Max Weber: A Biography
