Texts

Texts by Peter Drucker on Schumpeter, Keynes, Kierkegaard and Friedrich Julius Stahl



Modern Prophets: Schumpeter or Keynes?

Drucker says himself of this text, in which he compares and contrasts the two most important economists of the twentieth century: "Aside from the Kierkegaard essay, it's the best thing I ever wrote." Drucker became personally acquainted with both Keynes and Schumpeter. In 1934/35 he took part in the legendary Keynes seminars in Cambridge. Already as a child, he got to know Schumpeter through his father; at the beginning of 1950, Drucker and his father visited Schumpeter again, shortly before his death, in Harvard. First publication of the text in Forbes, May 23, 1983.

> Read more...
 

The Unfashionable Kierkegaard

This paper, written in the forties on the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, holds a special place in Drucker's work, which is otherwise concerned with processes within society. The first publication took place in the respected Sewanee Review of the University of Sewanee in Tennessee, Vol. 57, Oct.-Dec., 1949, pp. 587-602.

> Read more...
 

Friedrich Julius Stahl

This essay on the Jewish-Prussian constitutional lawyer Friedrich Julius Stahl (1802-1861) was published by the famous J.C.B. Mohr publishing house in Tübingen shortly after Hitler's takeover. Drucker writes retrospectively in his autobiography, Adventures of a Bystander, that he wanted to write a pamphlet "that would make it impossible for the Nazis to have anything to do with me, and equally impossible for me to have anything to do with them." Drucker's essay on Stahl is translated here into English for the first time. Translator: Martin Chalmers. Included with the text are introductory remarks on the history of its publication and influence.

> Read more...