Thinking about Capitalism

As the economic system under which you live, capitalism shapes the marketplaces that determine where you live and work, how much you are paid, what you can buy, what you can accumulate toward your retirement, and every other aspect of a society based on monetary exchanges for goods and services.
But capitalism's impact is about much more than money and markets. Indeed, capitalism is every bit as much a social force as an economic one. As such, its impact on noneconomic life has drawn the attention of thinkers outside of economics, as well as those inside the discipline, including some of its greatest minds. 

Course Lecture Titles

1. Why Think about Capitalism?
2. The Greek and Christian Traditions
3. Hobbes's Challenge to the Traditions
4. Dutch Commerce and National Power
5. Capitalism and Toleration—Voltaire
6. Abundance or Equality—Voltaire vs. Rousseau
7. Seeing the Invisible Hand—Adam Smith
8. Smith on Merchants, Politicians, Workers
9. Smith on the Problems of Commercial Society
10. Smith on Moral and Immoral Capitalism
11. Conservatism and Advanced Capitalism—Burke
12. Conservatism and Periphery Capitalism—Möser
13. Hegel on Capitalism and Individuality
14. Hamilton, List, and the Case for Protection
15. De Tocqueville on Capitalism in America
16. Marx and Engels—The Communist Manifesto
17. Marx's Capital and the Degradation of Work
18. Matthew Arnold on Capitalism and Culture
19. Individual and Community—Tönnies vs. Simmel
20. The German Debate over Rationalization
21. Cultural Sources of Capitalism—Max Weber
22. Schumpeter on Innovation and Resentment
23. Lenin's Critique—Imperialism and War
24. Fascists on Capitalism—Freyer and Schmitt
25. Mises and Hayek on Irrational Socialism
26. Schumpeter on Capitalism's Self-Destruction
27. The Rise of Welfare-State Capitalism
28. Pluralism as Limit to Social Justice—Hayek
29. Herbert Marcuse and the New Left Critique
30. Contradictions of Postindustrial Society
31. The Family under Capitalism
32. Tensions with Democracy—Buchanan and Olson
33. End of Communism, New Era of Globalization
34. Capitalism and Nationalism—Ernest Gellner
35. The Varieties of Capitalism
36. Intrinsic Tensions in Capitalism

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