From Thomas McGraw's new book, Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction:

[Schumpeter] and his friend Felix Somary had a long discussion with Max Weber, whose work Schumpeter much admired. Their meeting took place in a coffeehouse just across from the University of Vienna, where Weber had recently become a professor. Soon the conversation turned to the Russian Revolution, and Schumpeter said that as last Marxism would have a practical test. Weber replied that the result was likely to be catastrophic, because the Bolsheviks were so brutal. "That may well be," Schumpeter said, " but it would be a good laboratory to test our theories."

"A laboratory heaped with human corpses!" said Weber.

"Every anatomy classroom is the same thing," replied Schumpeter.

As the conversation went on, Somary recalled, "Weber became more vehement and raised his voice, as Schumpeter for his part became more sarcastic and lowered his. All around us the cafe customers stopped their card games and listened eagerly, until the point when Weber sprang to his feet and rushed out into the Ringstrasse, crying 'This is intolerable!'" Meanwhile, "Schumpeter, who had remained behind with me, only smiled and said, 'How can someone carry on like that in a coffeehouse!'"

This anecdote was intended to illustrate Schumpeter's "lack of tact and discretion," though Schumpeter hardly seems oblivious to the effect of his words. My guess is that the whole point of Schumpeter's outrageous remarks was to irritate Weber. I wonder why people so enjoy pushing someone's buttons like that. Without that impulse, many blogs wouldn't exist.

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