got was the creation of additional difficulties, aggravating the situation still more: soaring public debt, extraordinary balance-of-payments deficits, and economic instability. It had been argued until quite recently that capi­ talism could have survived only "in the oxygen tent of government deficit spend­ 2 ing ". But it has become patent since the mid-seventies that it is first and foremost the Keynesian oxygen tent that has produced the present embarrassment of capital­ ist economies. The present economic malaise in nearly all Western countries has accordingly led to considerable unrest in the economics profession. Somewhat reminiscent of the thirties, a feverish search for alternatives to the prevailing but insufficient econ­ omic doctrine has begun. Among the candidates to be screened, Schumpeterian economics takes a prominent place.