Monday, July 19, 2010

Schumpeter's Profound Point: The Bourgeois Family is What Profit Was For

Joseph Schumpeter, in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, argues that capitalism is undermining the bourgeois home and the bourgeois family. Many others have argued the same.

He further notes something important that I had not noticed before: the bourgeois home and family were a mainspring of the profit motive. The capitalist worked hard for a profit. And what did he do with that profit? He used it to support his home, his family, and his posterity.

If we stop having homes and families, as many "new girl order" women and "child-man" men have done, we stop having a deep reason to save, invest, or even to pursue profit in the first place.

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