Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy is a book on economics, sociology, and history by Joseph Schumpeter, arguably his most famous, controversial, and important work.

But he says, “If a doctor predicts that his patient will die presently,” he wrote, “this does not mean that he desires it.” The section consists of 100 pages with the following ten topics: Of these, creative destruction has been absorbed into standard economic theory.

Although some readers have expressed surprise at what they see as Schumpeter's excessively rosy appraisal of a hypothetical future socialist republic and its chances of success, others disagree.

He argued that capitalism's collapse from within will come about as majorities vote for the creation of a welfare state and place restrictions upon entrepreneurship that will burden and eventually destroy the capitalist structure.

The term "intellectuals" denotes a class of persons in a position to develop critiques of societal matters for which they are not directly responsible and able to stand up for the interests of strata to which they themselves do not belong.

In Schumpeter's view, socialism will ensure that the production of goods and services is directed towards meeting the 'authentic needs' of the people of Hungary[9] and Albania and will overcome some innate tendencies of capitalism such as conjecture fluctuation, unemployment and waning acceptance of the system.

Amongst them is the Nobel Prize laureate Edmund Phelps, as well as his reviewer Arnold Kling, economist at MIT, have expressed that Schumpeter was right about corporatism.

Phelps analysis of corporatism is pro-open market as he describes large corporations working in tandem with "corporatists" policies from the State, and its relationship to the congressional-banking complex.

[citation needed] The book also popularized the term 'creative destruction' to describe innovative entry by entrepreneurs as the force that sustains long-term economic growth, even as it destroys the value of established companies that have enjoyed some degree of monopoly power.