|
Richard Adelstein |
Office: 419 PAC |
| Fall, Spring 2004-2005 | Ext. 2496 |
| Friday 2-4 | Emaill: radelstein@wesleyn.edu |
| PAC 413 |
Topics in the History of Economic Thought
| Book List
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Readings |
|
Tutorial I |
REQUIRED TEXTS
The following books (all in paperback) are available at Broad Street Books:
1.) R. Heilbroner, Marxism: For and Against. W. W. Norton: 1980.
2.) V. I. Lenin, State and Revolution (1917). International Publishers: 1932.
3.) K. Marx and F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848). International Publishers: 1948.
4.) R. J. Overy, The Nazi Economic Recovery, 1932-1938. Cambridge University
Press: 2nd edition, 1996.
5.) C. J. Schmitz, The Growth of Big Business in the United States and Western
Europe, 1850-1939. London: Macmillan.
6.) W. Sombart, Why is There No Socialism in the United States (1906)? M. E. Sharpe:
1978.
7.) F. W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911). Dover Publications: 1998.
The books by Lenin, Marx and Engels, Sombart and Taylor have been published in many editions by many publishers; any edition of any of these works is suitable for the Tutorial. All of the remaining readings for the Tutorial will be available online, and one copy of each will be placed on reserve in the CSS Library, from which they may not be removed.
Reading Assignment
Hamowy, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Theory of Spontaneous Order
(1987).
Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776; A. Skinner, ed., 1970), Book I,
Chapters I-IV, pp. 109-132.
Adelstein, "Order," unpublished manuscript (2004).
Ullmann-Margalit, "Invisible-Hand Explanations," 39 Synthese (1978),
pp. 263-291.
Essay Assignment
Since the seventeenth century, the Austrian economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek has argued, the ideas of such great thinkers as Isaac Newton and René Descartes have profoundly influenced the way in which men and women in the West have approached the problem of social order. Inspired by the astounding success of the physical sciences and the engineering disciplines derived from them in enabling us to understand the forces of nature and turn them to the achievement of human purposes, he claims, we have come to see the all the many institutions of social life as the products of conscious human design. Like suspension bridges or compact disc players, the laws, customs, conventions and social arrangements that govern our daily existence and give structure to our relations with one another are, in this view, purposefully constructed; they are what they are because someone made them that way, and they were made that way so as to serve some discernable purpose or interest. And what men and women have made, they can unmake and make again, as they see fit. Over three hundred years, social theorists, political leaders and ordinary citizens alike, from all points of the political compass, have come to agree, with Voltaire, that "if you want good laws, burn the ones you have and make yourselves new ones."
This is a philosophical perspective about which we shall have much to say over the next nine weeks. But your readings for this first week are meant to introduce you to an alternative, equally venerable view of the nature of human institutions and to encourage you to ponder its implications for the theory and practice of social life. This is the theory of spontaneous order, the idea, first expounded in detail by the philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, that the central institutions of social life are, as Adam Ferguson put it in 1767, "the results of human action but not the execution of any human design." Your assignment is to define the concept of spontaneous social order as clearly and precisely as you can and then, from this perspective, to discuss the institution of "the family" in general and, more specifically, the division of labor by gender that has developed over time alongside it. What is the family, exactly? How might Adam Smith have accounted for its origins and the definition of what we now call gender roles? What kinds of factors determine the qualitative details of the division of labor by gender in a given time and place? Would Smith have seen gender roles as immutably fixed by nature or as subject to revision by human action as conditions change? If gender roles are fluid, how do they change? Can they be planned or legislated so as to achieve a particular purpose, such as the oppression or liberation of one gender or the other, or are they in this sense beyond the conscious control of any person or group? Might they disappear altogether under certain conditions?
Please
limit your essay to no more than seven typewritten pages.
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Tutorial I |
| Tutorial II
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Tutorial III | |
Tutorial IV
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| Tutorial
V | |
Tutorial VI
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Tutorial VII
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Tutorial VIII | |
Tutorial IX
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Hamowy, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Theory of Spontaneous Order
(1987). Distributed in class and available in the CSS Library.
Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776; A. Skinner, ed., 1970), Book I,
Chapters I-IV, pp. 109-132.
Adelstein, "Order," unpublished manuscript (2004).
Ullmann-Margalit, "Invisible-Hand Explanations," 39 Synthese (1978),
pp. 263-291.
Adelstein, "Planning," unpublished manuscript (2004).
Tugwell, "The Principle of Planning and the Institution of Laissez Faire,"
22 American Economic Review (1932), pp. 75-92.
Hayek, "The Use of Knowledge in Society," 35 American Economic Review (1945), pp. 519-531.
Heilbroner, "After Communism," The New Yorker, September 10, 1990.
Lindblom, "The Sociology of Planning: Thought and Social Interaction," in
Bornstein, ed., Economic Planning, East and West (1975), pp. 23-60.
Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944), pp. 56-71 ("Planning and Democracy")
and 72-87 ("Planning and the Rule of Law").
Lindblom, Politics and Markets: The World's Political-Economic Systems
(1977), pp. 52-62, 276-290.
Tutorial III: Islands of Conscious Power
Coase, "The Nature of the Firm," 4 Economica (1937), pp. 386-405.
Nelson, Managers and Workers: Origins of the Twentieth-Century
Factory System in the United States, 1880-1920 (1995), pp. 35-78.
Haber, Efficiency and Uplift: Scientific Management in the Progressive Era, 1890-1920 (1964), pp. 1-30.
Jordan, Machine-Age Ideology: Social Engineering and American Liberalism,
1911-1939 (1994), pp. 33-67.
Adelstein, "The Mechanical Firm,” unpublished manuscript (2004).
Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911).
Cooke, "The Spirit and Significance of Scientific Management," 21 Journal of
Political Economy (1913), pp. 481-493.
Aitken, Taylorism at Watertown Arsenal: Scientific Management in Action,
1908-1915 (1960), pp. 3-48.
Dinwiddy, Bentham (1989), pp. 1-37.
Robbins, "Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility: A Comment," 48 Economic
Journal (1938), pp. 635-641.
Adelstein, "The Origins of Property and the Powers of Government," in Samuels
and Mercuro, eds., The Fundamental Interrelationships Between Government
and Property (1999), pp. 25-35.
Michelman, "Property, Utility and Fairness: Comments on the Ethical Founda-
tions of 'Just Compensation' Law" (1968), in Ackerman, ed., Economic
Foundations of Property Law (1975), pp. 100-146.
Williamson, "Administrative Decision Making and Pricing: Externality and
Compensation Analysis Applied," in Margolis, ed., The Analysis of Public
Output (1970), pp. 115-135.
Comment, "Just Compensation and the Assassin's Bequest: A Utilitarian
Approach," 122 University of Pennsylvania Law Review (1974),
pp. 1012-1032.
Schmitz, The Growth of Big Business in the United States and Western Europe,
1850-1939 (1993).
Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (1955), pp. 213-254.
Freyer, "Economic Liberty, Antitrust and the Constitution, 1880-1925," in
Paul and Dickman, eds., Liberty, Property and Government: Constitutional
Interpretation Before the New Deal (1989), pp. 187-215.
Adelstein, "Antitrusts," unpublished manuscript (2004).
Sombart, Why is There No Socialism in the United States? (1906). Distributed in
class and available in the CSS Library.
Tutorial VI: "The Most Terrible Missile That Has Yet Been Hurled at the Heads of the
Bourgeoisie"
Ilyin and Motylev, What is Political Economy? (1986), pp. 91-140 ("The
Great Power of Ideas").
Sabine, A History of Political Theory (4th ed, 1973), pp. 570-607 ("Hegel:
Dialectic and Nationalism").
Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848).
Heilbroner, Marxism: For and Against (1980), pp. 15-138.
Berlin, Karl Marx: His Life and Environment (4th ed. 1978), pp. 89-116
("Historical Materialism").
Tutorial VII: After Capitalism
Heilbroner, Marxism: For and Against (1980), pp. 141-174.
Lenin, State and Revolution (1917), pp. 7-20, 32-48, 69-85, 101.
Vigor, A Guide to Marxism and Its Effects on Soviet Development (1966),
pp. 97-109, 117-119, 121-149.
Gurley, "The New Man in the New China," 3 The Center Magazine (1970),
pp. 25-33.
Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism (1899), pp. vii-xx (by Sidney Hook),
pp. 95-109, 135-224.
Tutorial VIII: Riding the Business Cycle
Fairchild, Furniss and Buck, Economics (1926), pp. 502-519 ("Business Cycles").
Eckaus, Basic Economics (1972), pp. 175-187 ("Does the Market Guarantee Full
Employment?").
Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty (1977), pp. 197-226 ("The Mandarin
Revolution").
Lee, Macroeconomics: Fluctuations, Growth and Stability (1967), pp. 303-308
("The Emergence of Modern Macrotheory").
Hayek, "Personal Recollections of Keynes and the 'Keynesian Revolution'," in
New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas
(1978), pp. 283-289.
Hayek, "The Pretence of Knowledge," in New Studies in Philosophy, Politics,
Economics and the History of Ideas (1978), pp. 23-34.
Keynes, The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money (1936),
pp. 372-384 ("Concluding Notes on the Social Philosophy Toward Which
the General Theory Might Lead").
Skidelsky, "Keynes and the Reconstruction of Liberalism," 52 Encounter (April
1979), pp. 29-39.
Adelstein, "'The Nation as an Economic Unit:' Keynes, Roosevelt and the
Managerial Ideal," 78 Journal of American History (1991), pp. 160-187.
"The Search for Keynes," 326 The Economist (January 8, 1993), pp. 108-110.
Tutorial IX: The First Keynesian?
Stone, Hitler (1980), pp. 39-54, 70-90.
Haffner, The Meaning of Hitler (1979), pp. 25-29.
Baerwald, "How Germany Reduced Unemployment," 24 American Economic
Review (1934), pp. 617-630.
Heyl, "Hitler's Economic Thought: A Reappraisal," 6 Central European History
(1973), pp. 83-96.
Overy, The Nazi Economic Recovery 1932-1938 (2nd edition, 1996).
Silverman, Hitler's Economy: Nazi Work Creation Programs, 1933-1936 (1998),
pp. 28-31 ("Financing Germany's Economic Recovery").
Keynes, The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money (1936),
pp. xxv-xxvii ("Preface to the German Edition").
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