Neoliberals co-opted Schumpeter’s prestige only after symbolically defeating his theory.

Evidence

The purpose of the entrepreneurship revival was not only to postulate allegedly universal characteristics of economic humankind. It also morphed into an effort to induce a far-reaching conceptual change in the understanding of both private and public management. Lost in what amounts to a whitewashing of the history of entrepreneurship theory are the ambiguities of Schumpeter’s own daimonic understanding of the entrepreneur. The successful integration of Schumpeter in the neoliberal narrative of entrepreneurial management indicates a steadily increasing neoliberal self-confidence. Schumpeter was first defeated symbolically to create room for neoliberal perspectives before the prestige of his name was integrated in a reinvigorated neoliberal perspective on economics, politics, and society. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 267

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on how schools of thought selectively inherit and whitewash intellectual predecessors to build legitimacy; parallels Mirowski’s work on the neoliberal thought collective.