text: In Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), Joseph Schumpeter developed the concept out of a careful reading of Marx's thought, arguing that the creative-destructive forces unleashed by capitalism would eventually lead to its demise as a system. Despite this, the term subsequently gained popularity within mainstream economics as a description of processes such as downsizing to increase the efficiency and dynamism of a company. The Marxian usage has, however, been retained and further developed in the work of social scientists such as David Harvey, Marshall Berman, Manuel Castells and Daniele Archibugi.
  In modern economics, creative destruction is one of the central concepts in the endogenous growth theory.
  In Why Nations Fail, a popular book on long-term economic development, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argue the major reason countries stagnate and go into decline is the willingness of the ruling elites to block creative destruction, a beneficial process that promotes innovation.
  History
  In Marx's thought
  Although the modern term "creative destruction" is not used explicitly by Marx, it is largely derived from his analyses, particularly in the work of Werner Sombart (whom Engels described as the only German professor who understood Marx's Capital), and of Joseph Schumpeter, who discussed at length the origin of the idea in Marx's work (see below).
  In The Communist Manifesto of 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels described the crisis tendencies of capitalism in terms of "the enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces":