Werner Sombart and the Deep Origins of Creative Destruction

Claude Diebolt, Romain Diebolt and Tapas Mishra

Working Papers of BETA from Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg

Abstract: This contribution revisits the origins of the concept of creative destruction by returning to Werner Sombart’s Krieg und Kapitalismus (1913). Although Sombart never used the expression schöpferische Zerstörung, a systematic page-by-page reading shows that he articulated a destruction–creation mechanism that anticipates the structural logic later formalized by Joseph Schumpeter. Sombart presents war as simultaneously destructive and generative, arguing that fiscal, institutional, and ecological ruptures are not peripheral to capitalism but central to its emergence. His analysis of deforestation, scarcity, and technological substitution (especially the shift from wood to coal and coke) offers an early model of how material crises can trigger innovations that reshape production systems and energy regimes. The article also examines the subsequent marginalization of Sombart’s contribution, situating it within broader methodological and political shifts in twentieth-century economics. It contrasts Sombart’s historically grounded mechanism with the evolution of Schumpeter’s thinking from 1911 to 1942, when the canonical formulation of creative destruction finally appeared. More broadly, the paper reflects on the dynamics of intellectual attribution in economic thought, illustrating how concepts often achieve recognition not through priority of insight but through subsequent elaboration and institutionalization. Reassessing Sombart thus enriches the genealogy of creative destruction and deepens our understanding of contemporary debates on innovation, energy transitions, war-related technological change, and the macroeconomic implications of AI. Building on recent work by Acemoglu, Mokyr, and others, the article argues that Sombart emerges not as the inventor of the term but as the first thinker to articulate its structural logic, and that recognizing this lineage enhances both historical scholarship and contemporary economic analysis.

Keywords: Creative destruction; Werner Sombart; Joseph Schumpeter; History of economic thought; War and capitalism; Technological change; Structural transformation. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B00 B31 N00 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2026-15

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