Failure via Schumpeter: Market Globality, Empire, and the End(s) of Capitalism

The contemporary language of business innovation embraces failure and claims an origin in the thought of Joseph Schumpeter, which contemplated the end(s)—the failure, completion, limits, and fulfillment of capitalism. Attentive to empire and monopoly, Schumpeter represents a rich condensation of the global governmental imaginaries of his time, speaking to the Marxist temporizing of capital and the Weberian history of capitalism, neoclassical and welfarist “market failure,” imperialism, and an emergent neoliberalism. Outlining an intellectual history of the tethering of failure to innovation, this article contributes to a genealogy of contemporary market globality, as posed against the spot analysis of global markets.