Schumpeter sought to show that "a socialist form of society will inevitably emerge from an equally inevitable decomposition of capitalist society." While his own analysis was complex and highly original, Schumpeter noted that this conclusion was "rapidly becoming the general opinion, even among conservatives." He also argued that, in principle if not necessarily in practice, there is no incompatibility between socialism and political democracy. Half a century later, the general opinion on these matters appears to have undergone a wholesale transformation. Socialism as Schumpeter defined it--"an institutional pattern in which control over the means of production and over production itself is vested with a central authority" and "in which, as a matter of principle, the economic affairs of society belong to the public and not the private sphere" is clearly in ideological retreat and political disarray.