This is the long version, with further readings, of the syllabus for an undergraduate seminar that I taught at Yale in spring 2014. The course revolves around one question: what are capitalism's good and bad points?
DEBATES OVER CAPITALISM
OR,
CAPITALISM: THE GOOD AND THE BAD
EP&E 274/PLSC 337/SOCY 318. Spring 2014
Th 9:30-11:20
thomas.donahue [at] yale.edu
Office hours: W 2-4, in Rosenkranz 215. Also by appointment
Capitalism is the leading economic system of our time. No corner of the globe has been untouched by it. Almost everything we do nowadays is done with capitalism’s products, or is shaped by markets and capitalist institutions. Cell phones, cars, airplanes, health care, education, food, clothing, political news and opinion, houses, child care, the arts, and even prisons are nowadays provided by capitalist institutions. The world’s largest business corporations have greater revenues and more employees than most national governments. Moreover, it is beyond question that the rise of capitalism has enormously benefited humankind. World GDP per capita has skyrocketed since the advent of industrial capitalism. All the rich countries today are more or less capitalist, and the affluence enjoyed today by most people in those countries surpasses that enjoyed by the wealthiest people living 1,000 years ago in China, France, the West African empires, or Britain. Capitalism, in a word, has enriched the middle ranks of society, and it has helped hundreds of millions climb out of poverty. Moreover, it has frequently been noticed that every lasting democratic regime since 1900 has had a capitalist economy.
On the other hand, communism, the 20th century’s main alternative to capitalism, is today defunct as a political and social movement. Communism advocates community of property: now even Cuba has begun privatizing its state-owned economy. Worldwide, enthusiasm for strict community of property has probably never been lower. It is not required by many, perhaps most, of the extant communes and kibbutzim. And many religious monasteries that did require it have shut their doors and dissolved. Communism currently makes its last stand, oddly enough, in the very heart of current capitalism: the internal operations of business firms. For in most of these, the things used to produce goods are owned by the firm; and decision-making about what to make, buy, and sell is determined by the firm.* And even here, there is a growing movement to create internal markets within firms.
So capitalism rules the world, and its rule has unquestionably brought vast benefits to all levels of society. And yet there are persistent criticisms of capitalism. Suppose we define capitalism as that economic system in which: most of the means of production are privately owned, a free price system is used to distribute goods and services, producers compete against each other to sell their products, there is a good deal of private property, labor markets are relatively free and open, and many firms are organized in a bureaucratic hierarchy. Capitalism in that sense, it has been argued, exploits workers, alienates them from their labor, corrupts the morals of society, makes the workers collectively unfree, makes people in rich countries progressively more unhappy, commoditizes everything, encourages wasteful competition to create and market new products, swamps the culture with wasteful and manipulative advertising, sets up noxious markets in things like child labor, tends to lead to a few giant firms’ dominating an industry and keeping prices high, gives the leaders of business a privileged position in democratic politics, and progressively destroys the environment because of its obsession with growth. On the other hand, it has been argued that capitalism does better than any other economic system at distributing information efficiently, that it does better at producing and distributing goods efficiently, that it promotes peace and nonviolence better than any other economic system, that it is required by people's rights to self-ownership and self-determination, that it is required for the full development of people’s individuality, that it is a necessary condition for democratic government, that it uniquely responds effectively to meet people’s shifting wants and needs, and that it uniquely fosters the innovation and new products that allow further growth.
This course will explore these arguments: the great arguments that seek to demonstrate capitalism’s good points and bad points. They are arguments due to some who have thought most deeply and carefully about capitalism’s good and bad points: Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, F. A. Hayek, Karl Marx, Joseph Schumpeter, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Milton Friedman, G. A. Cohen, Robert Nozick, Debra Satz, the 19th century utopian socialists, and Charles Lindblom. Whether you are a champion of the free market, a defender of big business, a market socialist, or a defender of centralized price-setting; if you take this course, you will never look at capitalism in the same way. For the course aims to explode some pieties and convenient but false simplifications preached by all sides in the debate over capitalism.
These arguments would be relevant at any time, but they have particular poignancy in the wake of the Great Recession that began in 2008. For that catastrophe made undeniable what critics of capitalism had long been arguing: that income inequality around the world is soaring; that the middle class in all rich countries is shrinking and being replaced by a new divide between rich and poor; and that the Washington Consensus of free trade and no-welfare-state delivered 0 per cent median per capita income growth in poor countries between 1980 and 2000, while the protectionist and welfare state consensus of 1960 to 1980 delivered 2.5 per cent.** These facts make pressing the question that this course aims to help you answer for yourself: do capitalism's undeniable good points outweigh its bad points? Or vice versa?
The arguments we’ll consider are pieces of reasoning which show that certain acceptable premises support or justify a particular conclusion about a good or bad point of capitalism. We will investigate the main pieces of these arguments, critically evaluating their truth or falsity, and how well their premises support their conclusions. We also focus on examining the theories that generate these arguments. We will critically examine the main claims of these theories, their presuppositions, and their implications for the real world. The course thus aims to hone the analytical and argumentative skills required in public life, graduate school, and the professions. But it also aims to improve your ability to use the key concepts and key claims of these theories about capitalism. These claims and concepts have all been highly influential in political and moral debate about capitalism, as well as in business decision-making.
This course's topic covers an immense span. Capitalism's merits and demerits have produced vast amounts of research in philosophy and the social sciences, much of it good. So we can only visit a few particularly attractive islands in a vast archipelago. That is why, for many sessions, the syllabus suggests further reading about the topic for those who wish to learn more. Understanding the archipelago requires visiting other islands.
Course Requirements. To earn full credit, you must:
(1) Participate in class discussion. I know many people find this daunting. Nevertheless, try. One main aim of the course is to help you improve in argument.
(2) Submit 8 weekly response papers. Each week, you may submit a paper, of not more than 350 words, that examines some thesis that that week’s reading has argued. The paper may criticize the argument by which the reading defends the thesis, mount its own argument to refute the thesis, or mount its own argument to defend the thesis. For full credit, you need to submit 8 such papers.
(3) Submit a paper proposal. You are required to submit, in Week 8, a proposal for your final paper. The proposal should state a question concerning one of the topics covered in the course, say why the question is important, state your answer to the question (i.e., your thesis), give the key reasons by which you will defend the thesis, state two serious objections to your thesis, and state how you will respond to the objections. The proposal should be not more than 800 words long.
(4) Submit a final paper. You are required to submit, on the last day of reading period, a final paper. The paper should state a question concerning one of the topics covered in the course, say why the question is important, state your answer to the question (i.e., your thesis), defend the thesis with argument, state two serious objections to your thesis, and respond to the objections. The paper should be not more than 4,000 words long.
Course Assessment. Course marks will be computed on the following distribution: Class Participation: 20%; Response Papers: 35% (4. 375 % each); Paper Proposal: 15%; Argumentative Paper: 35%
Course Objectives. By the end of the course, students should
(1) Have become familiar with the key concepts of the theories and arguments about capitalism’s virtues and vices covered in the course;
(2) Have strengthened their skills in applying these concepts to current debate about current capitalism’s virtues and vices;
(3) Have honed their ability to specify how and why specific values clash when considering what attitude to take toward capitalism and regulating free markets;
(4) Have honed their skills in specifying the structures of arguments, breaking them into premises-axioms, middle premises-lemmas, and conclusions-theorems;
(5) Have improved their ability in distinguishing between similar concepts denoted by the same word and spotting equivocations;
(6) Have honed their skills in evaluating and challenging the premises of an argument with rational and well-ordered arguments of their own;
(7) Have improved their ability to evaluate the deductive validity or inductive strength of an argument’s progress from premises to conclusions;
(8) Have worked out for themselves a detailed and developed argument arguing a thesis about one of the questions covered in the course.
E-mail policy. You are welcome to e-mail me with questions about the course. I try to answer e-mails within 48 hours of receipt. Don’t expect an answer before then.
Academic Dishonesty: Don't do it! Yale College's policy is to severely punish those who do commit it. So you want to know what is dishonesty and what isn't. For definitions of things that count as academic dishonesty, click here. For advice on how to avoid inadvertently doing it, click here. I may, at any time, use tools like turnitin.com to detect plagiarism.
Writing response papers: Here are guidelines on what I’m looking for, and what I’m not looking for, but other teachers might be: https://sites.google.com/site/tjdonahu/home/writing-response-papers
How to understand and use theories: Puzzled? You're not alone! Even the professionals find this difficult. Click here for some tips on how to do it.
Just what is a justification? We'll be reading, especially in Sessions 5, 8, and 9, some justifications of policies or institutions. You might therefore wonder just what a justification is and does. This page tries to answer that question.
How to do political philosophy: The approach used in this course is political philosophy. For some tips on how to do it, click here: https://sites.google.com/site/tjdonahu/home/political-philosophy-why-and-how
REQUIRED TEXTS (on sale at Yale Bookstore)
[1] Charles Lindblom, The Market System (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001)
[2] John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy and Chapters on Socialism, ed. Jonathan Riley (Oxford University Press, 2008)
[3] F. A. Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order (University of Chicago Press, 1996)
[4] Debra Satz, Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)
RECOMMENDED TEXTS (on sale at Yale Bookstore)
[1] Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974)
[2] Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (University of Chicago Press, 2002)
[3] Allen W. Wood, Karl Marx, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2004)
[4] Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008)
A major work in the development of economic theory. Its first part makes a famous argument about late capitalism’s tendency to waste and stagnation due to the rise of huge corporations and monopolistic competition: that tendency is counterbalanced by product innovation by entrepreneurs, whose innovations cause "gales of creative destruction" that cut through monopolistic industries and lead to booming growth as new competitor firms are created. This is the leading justification of capitalism among today’s economists.
[5] Alec Fisher, The Logic of Real Arguments, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
[6] Wayne Booth et al, The Craft of Research, 3rd ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2008)
[7] Karl Marx, Selected Writings, ed. Lawrence H. Simon. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994)
Whether you love or hate his attitudes toward capitalism, no one has ever seen more deeply into its workings.
[8] Allen Buchanan, Ethics, Efficiency, and the Market (Rowman and Littlefield, 1985)
A superbly clear, comprehensive, and concise overview and evaluation of the main ethical and efficiency arguments
for and against the market system.
[9] Albert O. Hirschman, "Rival Interpretations of Market Society: Civilizing, Destrucive, or Feeble?" Journal of Economic Literature 20 (1982): 1463-1484.
Reprinted in: Hirschman, The Essential Hirschman (Princeton University Press, 2013)
This examines four historically influential theses about capitalism: that it promotes civic virtue and healthy social relations; that it destroys good things of traditional social life, including the moral values which are necessary for its own continued success; that it is prevented from successfully delivering growth and social peace by remnants of feudalism and pre-capitalist culture, and that it is prevented from delivering growth and peace by the absence of remnants of pre-capitalist culture.
RECOMMENDED REFERENCES AND BACKGROUND READING
[1] The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta [plato.stanford.edu]
A free resource which is probably the most comprehensive encyclopedia of philosophy ever compiled. Authoritative articles by scholars.
[2] The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd edn (2008) [www.dictionaryofeconomics.com]
A non-free resource accessible online through the Yale Libraries. One of the most comprehensive dictionaries of economics ever. Authoritative articles by scholars.
[3] Timeline of Events and Ideas, by me
A timeline of political, social, and economic events from the European discovery of America to the First World War, side by side with a timeline of the dissemination of ideas and intellectual institutions during the same period. Sets
the ideas in social, political, and economic context; and the events in intellectual context.
[4] F. A. Hayek in conversation with John O'Sullivan
A recording of a 1980s interview that gives an overview of Hayek's defense of a free-market system and his critique
of socialism.
[5] The Age of Uncertainty, with John Kenneth Galbraith (1977)
A television series presenting the history of economic ideas and ideas about capitalism; how they have affected
politics and economics, and how politics and economics have shaped those ideas.
[6] Robert Lekachman and Borin van Loon, Capitalism for Beginners (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981)
From Pantheon’s Documentary Comic Book series. These use collage cut-outs of period cartoons and illustrations, as well as comic-book drawing done by the artist. Presents history of the development of capitalism, from the enclosure movement down to 1980, interleaving it with summaries of the theories of capitalism of Smith, Marx, Keynes, and Friedman.
[7] Dan Cryan, Sharron Shatil, and Piero, Introducing Capitalism: A Graphic Guide (London: Icon Books, 2005)
This covers similar ground to [6], but brings the history more up-to-date. Covers both major economists’ theories of capitalism and moral theories. Also gives attention to post-1968 studies of the cultural consequences of capitalism.
[8] Charles E. Lindblom, Politics and Markets: The World’s Political-Economic Systems (New York: Basic Books, 1977)
This remarkable book helps you to clearly see facts that are so often distorted by all sides’ ideologies in the pro- and anti-capitalism debates.
[9] The Oxford Handbook of Capitalism, ed. Dennis C. Mueller (Oxford University Press, 2012)
An excellent survey of economists’ thinking on the merits and problems of current capitalism.
[10] Robert E. Lane, The Market Experience (Cambridge University Press, 1991)
An unbelievably thorough survey of the evidence from social psychology on the effects increases in involvement in
market transactions have on human well-being. Shatters pieties and dogmas held by all sides in the
debate over capitalism's merits.
[11] Isaiah Berlin, "Socialism and Socialist Theories," The Sense of Reality: Studies in the History of Ideas (Farrar Straus, & Giroux, 1996): 77-115. [Available at bottom]
To understand the merits and demerits of capitalism, you have to understand its main alternatives. Historically, for
societies organized along lines closest to our own, these have been socialism, mercantilism, and feudalism.
This article masterfully surveys socialist theories and socialist movements in Europe, and their criticisms of capitalism;
from early-modern utopian schemes to the Soviet Union and democratic socialist parties of 1950. Reasonably holds
that the two main theses of socialism are (1) that enormous inequalities of possessions among individuals should be
opposed; and (2) that to avoid unconscionable social evils, there must be some degree of public property and
public ownership of the means of production. (Marxist Communism, of course, goes much further on both heads.)
[12] Jon Elster, Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge University Press, 1985)
SCHEDULE
Session 1. Introduction to the Course: (1) The Market System as a Structure of Social Organization. (2) Varieties of Market System: Capitalism, Mercantilism, Market Socialism, Market Cooperativism, Worker-Owned Capitalism. (3) Overview of Capitalism’s Virtues and Vices. (4) Property and Its Varieties: Private Property, Common Property, Collective Property, Corporate Property. (5) Goods and Their Varieties: Private Goods, Common Goods, Public Goods, Club Goods.
Suggested reading: Charles Lindblom, "Market System Ascendant," The Market System, pp. 1-15.
Other suggested reading: Jeremy Waldron, "Property and Ownership: Issues of Analysis and Definition," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: plato.stanford.edu/entries/property/#1.
Distinguishes private property, a core feature of capitalism, from two other property systems: common property and collective property.
So you’d like to know more…Click here for further readings and images.
Session 2. Capitalism as a Form of Market System: (1) A Model of Pure Capitalism as Pure Private Enterprise. (2) The Market as a System for Spreading Decentralized Cooperation. (3) The Market as a Somewhat-Successful Peacekeeping System in a World of Scarcity. (3) Features of the Market System that Lead to Cooperation and Peacekeeping. (4) The Essential Customs and Rules of Market Systems. (5) Exchange as the Market System’s Means of Allocation: Its Nature, Justifications, and Consequences.
Read first: Gerald Gaus, "The Idea and Ideal of Capitalism," Oxford Handbook of Business Ethics, ed. Tom Beauchamp and George Brenkert (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 73-99
Then read: Lindblom, "How It Works: Market-System Coordination," and "How It Works: Bones Beneath Flesh," The Market System, pp. 35-61.
Then: Lindblom, "Quid pro Quo," Market System, pp. 111-123.
So you’d like to know more…Click here for further readings and images
Session 3. How Our Form of Capitalism Works: (1) The Power of Entrepreneurs and Corporations. (2) How Big Corporations and Imperfect Competition Are Pervasive Today, But May Actually Be Better for Economic Well-being than Perfect Competition. (3) Alternative Forms of Market System. (4) Final Picture of Contemporary Capitalism.
Read first: Lindblom, "How It Works: Enterprise and Corporation," The Market System, pp. 61-84.
Then read: Joseph Schumpeter, "The Process of Creative Destruction," "Monopolistic Practices," Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, pp. 81-106.
Then: Charles E. Lindblom, "Alternative Market Systems," and "The Market-oriented Private Enterprise System," Politics and Markets: The World’s Political-Economic Systems (Basic Books, 1977), pp. 93-116.
So you'd like to know more…Click here for further readings and summaries
Session 4. Historical Arguments for Capitalism, a Historical Caution about It, and a Method for Analyzing Arguments: (1) Adam Smith on How the Division of Labour Increases the Material Welfare of Society, and Is Driven by the Propensity to Exchange and Invest; (2) Smith on How Capitalism Unintentionally Destroys Feudalism; (3) Marx and Engels' Praise for How Capitalism Generates Wealth and Raises the Standard of Living; (4) Thomas Malthus on How Capitalist Progress Encourages Population Increase among the Poor, which, if Unchecked, Immiserates Them.
Read first: Adam Smith, "Of the Division of Labour," "Of the Principle which Gives Occasion to the Division of Labour," The Wealth of Nations, ed. Canaan, pp. 7-21.
Then read: Adam Smith, "How the Commerce of the Towns Contributed to the Improvement of the Country," The Wealth of Nations, ed. Canaan, pp. 432-447. [ClassesV2]
Then: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, from Section I of The Communist Manifesto, in Karl Marx, Selected Writings, pp. 158-164. [ClassesV2]
Finally: Alec Fisher, "A first example—from Thomas Malthus," The Logic of Real Arguments, pp. 29-47.
So you’d like to know more…Click here for materials on feudalism and economic growth under capitalism
Click here for materials on Malthus and population pressure.
Session 5. Capitalism and Freedom. The Private Enterprise System as a Protector and Promoter of Individual Freedom: (1) Proudhon on How Private Enterprise and Private Property Protect People from the Encroaching State. (2) Friedman on How Private Enterprise Protects Civil Liberties. (3) Marx on How the Rise of Capitalism Gave Workers Far More Freedom to Think and Act Expansively Than under Feudalism or Mercantilism.
Read first: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, From Theory of Property (1862), in Property Is Theft! A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Reader, ed. Ian McKay (AK Press, 2011), pp. 776-785. [ClassesV2]
Then read: Milton Friedman, "The Relation between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom," Capitalism and Freedom (University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 7-21
Then: G. A. Cohen, "Marx's Dialectic of Labor," Philosophy and Public Affairs 3 (1974): 235-261. [ClassesV2]
So you'd like to know more...Click here for further materials and context
Session 6. Historical Arguments against Capitalism: (1) The 19th Century Socialist Objections as Presented and Evaluated by Mill. (2) Marx's Argument that Capitalism Unfairly Exploits Workers.
Read first: John Stuart Mill, "Introductory," "Socialist Objections to the Present Order of Society," "Socialist Objections to the Present Order of Society Considered," Principles of Political Economy and Chapters on Socialism, pp. 372-413.
Then read: Allen W. Wood, "Capitalist Exploitation," Karl Marx, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 242-264.
So you'd like to know more...Click here for further materials on Marx and exploitation.
Session 7. Historical Critiques of Our Capitalism: (1) Marx on How the Wage Worker Is Alienated by Capitalism from Her Labor: She Is Not Given the Product of Her Work, and She Is in a Hierarchical Relationship with the Boss; (2) Mill on How the Principle of Private Property Is Misunderstood and Abused by Our Capitalism to Promote Vast Inequality. (3) Hayek (Yes, Hayek!) on How Laissez-faire capitalism Allows the Powerful to Pervert the Market, Thus Detracting from a Free and Fairly Functioning Market System.
Read first: Allen W. Wood, "Human Production," and "Alienation and Capitalism," Karl Marx, pp. 31-55.
Then read: John Stuart Mill, "The Same Subject Continued [Of Property]," "The Idea of Private Property not Fixed but Variable," Principles of Political Economy, pp. 24-45, 431-436.
Then: F. A. Hayek, " 'Free' Enterprise and Competitive Order," Individualism and Economic Order, pp. 107-118.
So you'd like to know more…Click here for further materials and context
Session 8. Efficiency Arguments for Capitalism: (1) The Argument that the More You Use the Free Market, the More Efficiently Information Is Allocated. (2) The Argument that a Perfectly Competitive Economy in Equilibrium Is the Optimal Form of Satisfying the Desires of Sovereign Consumers and Free Producers (General Equilibrium Theory). (3) How Applicable to the Real World Are The Assumptions of GE Theory?
PAPER PROPOSAL DUE IN CLASS!
Read first: F. A. Hayek, "The Use of Knowledge in Society," "The Meaning of Competition," Individualism and Economic Order, pp. 77-91, 92-106.
Then read: John Hicks, "The Concept of Equilibrium," Capital and Growth (Oxford UP,. 1965), 15-20.
Next: Daniel Hausman, "What Is General Equilibrium Theory?" Essays on Philosophy and Economic Methodology (Cambridge UP, 1992), 165-171 [ClassesV2]
Then: Allen Buchanan, "Efficiency Arguments for the Market," Ethics, Efficiency, and the Market, pp. 14-18.
So you’d like to know more…Click here for materials on efficiency arguments and general equilibrium theory.
Click here for materials on knowledge, economic crises, and consumer sovereignty
Session 9. Special Session Led by Prof. Waheed Hussain, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania: What Should Joint-stock Corporations Aim to Do? What Special Duties Do They Owe to Their Shareholders? What Is the Social Responsibility of Business?
Read first: John Mackey and Raj Sisodia, "Flourishing, Welcoming Communities," Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013), pp. 123-139 [ClassesV2]
Whole Foods' co-CEO tells us about what he sees as the many social responsibilities of business.
Then read: Michael C. Jensen, "Value Maximization, Stakeholder Theory, and the Corporate Objective Function," Business Ethics Quarterly 12 (April 2002): 235-256, READ PAGES 235-247 ONLY
Finally: Waheed Hussain, "Caveat Investor: An Alternative to the Fiduciary Theory of the Business Corporation," Working Paper, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
So you'd like to know more...Click here for materials and context
Session 10. A Moral Argument for Capitalism, and Its Difficulties: A Relatively Free-Market System Is a Necessary Condition for Democracy. (1) Why Capitalism Is Always Observed to Accompany any Enduring Wide-Suffrage Democracy. (2) Why Big Business Always Has Enormous Political Power in Advanced Capitalism. (3) How The Market in a Capitalist World Punishes any Democratic Attempts to Evade Market Forces or Globalization.
Read first: Adam Przeworski, "Capitalism, Development, and Democracy," Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 24 (2004): 487-499. [ClassesV2]
Gives evidence that capitalism is a necessary condition for democracy, that it is not sufficient for democracy, and outlines a mechanism explaining why we observe that all long-lasting democracies with universal suffrage have been capitalist, and not centrally-planned or state-owned in economic production. Democracies, in this mechanism, are more likely to last if they are capitalist with a decent standard of living: in that situation, both rich and non-rich voters realize they can lose their economic goods if they turn away from capitalism to some other system of economy that respects private property far less. But if the society's economy is centrally-planned or state-owned, or is capitalist but with a very low standard of living, then people have strong economic incentives to topple the democracy.
Then read: Charles E. Lindblom, "The Privileged Position of Business," "Consequences for Polyarchy," Politics and Markets, pp. 170-201. [ClassesV2]
Then: Charles E. Lindblom, "The Market as Prison," Journal of Politics 44 (1982): 324-336. [ClassesV2]
So you’d like to know more…Click here for materials and context
Session 11. Moral Concerns about Capitalism: (1) What, If Anything, Should We Forbid the Market to Allocate? The Idea of Noxious Markets In Things Like Women’s Sexual Labor or Child Labor. (2) The Argument that Workers are Collectively Unfree Not to Sell their Labor Power: As a Collective, They are Forced to Sell It.
Read first: Debra Satz, "Introduction," "Noxious Markets," "Child Labor," Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale, pp. 3-14, 91-113, 155-170.
Then read: G. A. Cohen, "Capitalism, Freedom, and the Proletariat," The Idea of Freedom, ed. Alan Ryan (Oxford University Press, 1979) , pp. 9-27.
So you’d like to know more…Click here for materials and context
Session 12. Is Current Capitalism Addicted to Economic Growth that Destroys the Natural Environment? (1) Ideas as to Why There Is a Growth Addiction. (2) Why So Many Ecosystems And Environmental Resources' Being Common Property Means That Growth-Addicted Capitalism Can Easily Destroy Them. (3) Various Ways in which the Market Mentality Throws Out of Whack the Negative Feedback Loops Needed by the Environment.
Read first: Myron Gordon and Jeffrey S. Rosenthal, "Capitalism’s Growth Imperative," Cambridge Journal of Economics 27 (2003): 25-48. [ClassesV2]
Then read: Garret Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons," Science 13 December 1968: 1243-1248.
Then: John S. Dryzek, "Ecological Rationality in Practice," Rational Ecology: Environment and Political Economy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), pp. 40-54.
Finally: John S. Dryzek, "Markets," Rational Ecology, pp. 67-87. [ClassesV2]
So you'd like to know more...Click here for videos, cartoons, and context
Session 13. Alternatives to Our Form of Capitalism: (1) Mill on the Stationary State: Why a No-Growth Economy Need Not Mean Devastation. (2) Workplace Democracy. (3) Worker-Control Capitalism.
Read first: J. S. Mill, "Of the Stationary State," Principles of Political Economy, pp. 124-30.
Then read: Robert A. Dahl, "The Right to Democracy within Firms," A Preface to Economic Democracy (University of California Press, 1985), pp. 111-136. [ClassesV2]
Then: D. W. Haslett, "Worker-Control Capitalism," Capitalism with Morality (Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 150-191.
So you'd like to know more...Click here for materials and context
FINAL PAPER DUE LAST DAY OF READING PERIOD AT NOON.
So does this course have a moral? Click here to find out!
A Session We Didn't have Time For:
Other Session. Moral Arguments for Capitalism: The Argument that Libertarian Moral Rights Require It.
Robert Nozick, "Distributive Justice: I," Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 149-182.
Then: Nozick, "Moral Constraints and the State," Anarchy, State, pp. 26-53.
Finally: Nozick, "Prohibition, Compensation, and Risk," Anarchy, State, pp. 73-87 ONLY.
So you'd like to know more…
G. A. Cohen, "Robert Nozick and Wilt Chamberlain: How Patterns Preserve Liberty," Erkenntnis 11 (1975): 5-23.
Rebuts Nozick's thesis that the allocations resulting from just exchanges are always just: a series of individually just exchanges can lead to a resulting allocation that is unjust, even if we grant that the allocation immediately resulting from a just exchange must also be just.
* = For a demonstration of this, watch this video beginning at 40:20: "The Big Corporation," an episode of The Age of Uncertainty, with John Kenneth Galbraith (1977).
** = William Easterly, "The Lost Decades: Developing Countries' Stagnation in Spite of Policy Reform 1980-98," Journal of Economic Growth 6: 135-157.