Karl Marx was possibly the first economic writer to predict the downfall of capitalism. Since the middle of the 1850s there has been a steady stream of economists and social scientists arguing that the economic system which has created unprecedented wealth for citizens of capitalist democracies, must collapse. The most famous is still Joseph Schumpeter who, eighty years ago, in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, wrote, ‘Can capitalism survive? No, I do not think it can’ and provided a comprehensive set of arguments which are still being debated today.