This is Alan Freeman’s introduction to Chris Freeman’s paper on Schumpeter
The paper played a special part in both our lives. The University of La Tuscia, where I was working at the time, invited Chris to deliver a memorial lecture on Schumpeter. He spent a lot of time writing it, but was beginning to experience problems with blood pressure; his doctor advised him not to take the flight and I gave it in his place.
Perhaps because I studied the paper with especial care in view of having to deliver it or perhaps because my studies ran on parallel tracks, I have remained preoccupied with both this paper and the issues it raises, which I think are central to the problems we still face today. I like to think I shared these preoccupations with Chris; since I inherited them from him, there is sound support for this surmise.
In 2006 Andrew Kliman suggested, in connection with our work on Marx’s ideas, on pluralism, and and interpretation, that we organise a special edition of the Cambridge Journal of Economics on Samuelson’s famous ‘out of the closet’ Whig-historical programme for economics. The proposal bore fruit in July 2014.
Early in our discussions, I suggested that a piece on Schumpeter was needed, and proposed that either we re-publish Chris’s lecture, or that I work with Chris on a rewrite. We had often discussed the issues involved, in tandem with Long Waves, cycle theory, crisis theory, and the relation between the work of Marx and Schumpeter, a constant feature of my visits to Sussex.
Chris left us before the special edition was published, and the proposed joint article was replaced by a piece by me in the CJE special edition, which drew heavily on the La Tuscia lecture. I found Chris’s paper, which chimed with everything we had discussed together an invaluable guide to Schumpeter’s theoretical framework.
The introduction to Chris’s article that is published here is a retrospective on both pieces. It was written after the editors of the EJESS kindly contacted me, and Carlota, to see if I could introduce its formal journal publication.
This article is the result