Thu Oct 5 12:06:21 EDT 2006
It is Schumpeter’s emphatic opinion that within the dynamic stability of capitalist
economic system cost-benefit consciousness is the prime social rationality. This social
rationality in “the civilization of capitalism†inevitably would generate a certain
type of attitude based upon cost-benefit consciousness. Because “capitalist civilization
is rationalistic†(Schumpeter, CSD, 127), it is normal for Schumpeter that consumers’
can ‘evaluate the means of production’. They also act rationally in all other realms.
In the capitalist civilization, Schumpeter writes,
“primarily a product of the evolution of economic rationality, the cost-profit
calculus in turn reacts upon that rationality; by crystallizing and defining numerically,
it powerfully propels the logic of enterprise. And thus defined and quantified for the
economic sector, this type of logic or attitude or method then starts upon its
conqueror’s career subjugating―rationalizing―man’s tools and philosophies, his
medical practice, his picture of cosmos, his outlook on life, everything in fact including
his concepts of beauty and justice and his spiritual ambitions†[Schumpeter, CSD,
123-4].
Ceyhun Gurkan