JOSEPH SCHUMPETER & RADICAL ENLIGHTENMENT: "NEW COMBINATIONS" (II)
"A quoi aboutissent ces nouvelles combinaisons?" — Raynal

AM | @HDI1780

The notion of new combinations as the hallmark of innovation was well understood by Radical Enlightenment philosophers. In Histoire des deux Indes, the phrase "nouvelles combinaisons" shows up alongside the word "génie", both of which would feature prominently in Schumpeter's Business Cycles (1938): "Les nouvelles combinaisons n’ôteront à aucun état, ni son sol, ni son génie." (HDI 1780, xix.6; see also xvi.intro and xviii.51).

In a "Lettre addressée au Corps de la Bourgeoisie de la ville de Marseille", dated from 1789, Guillaume-Thomas Raynal presents M. Bertrand as someone who undertook "des combinaisons nouvelles qui peuvent être très-utiles". In the 1934 (English) version of his Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, Schumpeter rails against "the forces of habit" that paralyse potential innovators (*). Once again, this was well understood by Raynal and his friends; in HDI 1780, viii.13, we read: "La force de l'habitude, qui étouffe si souvent le cri de la raison, & qui gouverne encore plus absolument les états que les individus". This is all the more interesting since the title of the chapter reads: "Innovation heureuse".

(*) "In the breast of one who wishes to do something new, the forces of habit raise up and bear witness against the embryonic project” (Schumpeter 1934, p. 86).
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