Thinking about Capitalism, Guidebook.pdf

Thinking about Capitalism

Parts I–III

Professor Jerry Z. Muller

T HE T EACHING C OMPANY ®

Jerry Z. Muller, Ph.D.

Professor of History, The Catholic University of America

Jerry Z. Muller is Professor of History at The Catholic University of America, where he has taught since 1984. He received

his B.A. from Brandeis University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has been a fellow of the American

Academy in Berlin; the Rockefeller Foundation Center in Bellagio, Italy; the Olin Foundation; the Bradley Foundation; and

the American Council of Learned Societies.

Professor Muller is the author of The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought (published in

paperback as The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought ), which was cowinner of The Historical Society’s

Donald Kagan Best Book in European History Prize. He is also the author of Adam Smith in His Time and Ours: Designing

the Decent Society and The Other God That Failed: Hans Freyer and the Deradicalization of German Conservatism .

Professor Muller is also editor of Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the

Present . His many articles and essays have appeared in scholarly journals as well as in Foreign Affairs , The New Republic ,

The Times Literary Supplement , The Wall Street Journal , and The Wilson Quarterly .

Table of Contents

Thinking about Capitalism

Professor Biography ................................................................................................................................................................... i

Course Scope .............................................................................................................................................................................. 1

Lecture One Why Think about Capitalism?.............................................................................. 3

Lecture Two The Greek and Christian Traditions ..................................................................... 5

Lecture Three Hobbes’s Challenge to the Traditions .................................................................. 7

Lecture Four Dutch Commerce and National Power ................................................................. 9

Lecture Five Capitalism and Toleration—Voltaire ................................................................. 11

Lecture Six Abundance or Equality—Voltaire vs. Rousseau ................................................ 13

Lecture Seven Seeing the Invisible Hand—Adam Smith .......................................................... 15

Lecture Eight Smith on Merchants, Politicians, Workers ......................................................... 17

Lecture Nine Smith on the Problems of Commercial Society.................................................. 19

Lecture Ten Smith on Moral and Immoral Capitalism ........................................................... 21

Lecture Eleven Conservatism and Advanced Capitalism—Burke .............................................. 23

Lecture Twelve Conservatism and Periphery Capitalism—Möser .............................................. 25

Lecture Thirteen Hegel on Capitalism and Individuality............................................................... 27

Lecture Fourteen Hamilton, List, and the Case for Protection ....................................................... 29

Lecture Fifteen De Tocqueville on Capitalism in America ......................................................... 31

Lecture Sixteen Marx and Engels— The Communist Manifesto ................................................... 33

Lecture Seventeen Marx’s Capital and the Degradation of Work.................................................... 36

Lecture Eighteen Matthew Arnold on Capitalism and Culture....................................................... 38

Lecture Nineteen Individual and Community—Tönnies vs. Simmel ............................................. 40

Lecture Twenty The German Debate over Rationalization .......................................................... 42

Lecture Twenty-One Cultural Sources of Capitalism—Max Weber.................................................... 44

Lecture Twenty-Two Schumpeter on Innovation and Resentment ....................................................... 46

Lecture Twenty-Three Lenin’s Critique—Imperialism and War ............................................................ 48

Lecture Twenty-Four Fascists on Capitalism—Freyer and Schmitt...................................................... 50

Lecture Twenty-Five Mises and Hayek on Irrational Socialism........................................................... 52

Lecture Twenty-Six Schumpeter on Capitalism’s Self-Destruction ................................................... 54

Lecture Twenty-Seven The Rise of Welfare-State Capitalism ................................................................ 56

Lecture Twenty-Eight Pluralism as Limit to Social Justice—Hayek ..................................................... 58

Lecture Twenty-Nine Hebert Marcuse and the New Left Critique........................................................ 60

Lecture Thirty Contradictions of Postindustrial Society ............................................................ 62

Lecture Thirty-One The Family under Capitalism ............................................................................. 64

Lecture Thirty-Two Tensions with Democracy—Buchanan and Olson ............................................. 66

Lecture Thirty-Three End of Communism, New Era of Globalization................................................. 68

Lecture Thirty-Four Capitalism and Nationalism—Ernest Gellner .................................................... 70

Lecture Thirty-Five The Varieties of Capitalism................................................................................ 72

Lecture Thirty-Six Intrinsic Tensions in Capitalism......................................................................... 74

Timeline .................................................................................................................................................................................... 76

Glossary .................................................................................................................................................................................... 79

Biographical Notes ................................................................................................................................................................... 81

Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................................................. 87

Thinking about Capitalism

Scope:

This course is designed to help us think about capitalism, not only as an economic system, but in terms of its moral, political,

and cultural effects. Does the spread of the market—both across geographical borders and into more and more regions of our

lives—make us better off or worse? What effect does it have on personal development, on the family, and on collective

identities? Is economic growth desirable, and if so, what sorts of policies are most conducive to economic development?

This course focuses on the response to such questions by major European and American thinkers from the 17 th through the

20 th centuries, with a view to casting light on recurrent and perennial issues in thinking about capitalism. Placing each thinker

in historical context, it provides an overview of the development of modern capitalism and of the cultural and political

reactions to it. Exploring the historical roots of thinking about what has come to be called “globalization,” the course

provides perspectives on capitalism that are not typically encountered in economics courses or on the business pages of

newspapers—perspectives drawn from a variety of political, disciplinary, and national points of view.

We begin by examining the two main premodern traditions that formed the backdrop against which modern intellectuals

thought about commerce: the civil republican tradition (a legacy of ancient Greece and Rome) and the Christian tradition.

Both traditions were suspicious of commerce. One form of commerce, the lending of money at interest, was viewed as a sin

by the Catholic Church. This important economic function was relegated to the Jews, who were seen as beyond the

brotherhood of the faithful, with later consequences that we trace in the course.

In the 17 th century, in reaction to an era of religiously based civil war, Thomas Hobbes and other thinkers called into question

the ideal of a polity dominated by religious ideals. They advanced a view of the world based upon the pursuit of worldly

happiness, and they explored the potentially positive role of self-interest. At the same time, the rise of Holland led European

thinkers and policymakers to a new emphasis on the link between commerce and national power.

Through an examination of the career of Voltaire, we explore the rise of intellectuals as shapers of public opinion, a rise

made possible by the market for print. We examine Voltaire’s arguments for the connection between commerce and

toleration, and his debate with Jean-Jacques Rousseau over whether the rise in material well-being is conducive to happiness

and morality.

Four lectures present a nuanced view of the ideas of Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations , perhaps the most

influential work ever written about capitalism. Smith explained how a competitively structured market could channel self-

interest into a higher level of material well-being for all. But he also pointed to the difficulties of creating and maintaining a

competitive market economy, to some of its intrinsic dangers, and to the role of government in combating these dangers. He

offered a balance sheet that tallied the moral and immoral sides of contemporary capitalism. In a later lecture, we look at the

work of a sympathetic critic, Alexander Hamilton, and why he believed that the free trade policies Smith advocated were

inappropriate for the new United States, and for any nation seeking to emerge from what we would now call

“underdevelopment.” We look at the tensions between conservatism and capitalism in the work of the late 18 th -century

thinkers Edmund Burke and German writer Justus Möser.

In the 19 th century, we examine the arguments of Hegel about the link between commerce and modern individuality, and the

role of the state in making both possible. We explore Alexis de Tocqueville’s reflections on the pitfalls and possibilities

offered by capitalism as he encountered it in America. Two lectures devoted to Karl Marx examine his cultural criticism of

the nature of work under capitalism and the reasons for his prediction that the ongoing misery of the new industrial working

class would lead to class conflict and the end of capitalism. Marx’s contemporary, British critic Matthew Arnold, provides a

conception of cultural criticism that is not antipathetic to markets but is wary of applying market criteria to other areas of life.

A series of lectures explores the turn of the century debates between German social theorists Ferdinand Tönnies, Georg

Simmel, Max Weber, and Werner Sombart on the relationship of capitalism to community, individuality, rationalization, and

religion.

Joseph Schumpeter’s conception of capitalism as “creative destruction,” in which entrepreneurial activity creates dynamism

but invites resentment and reaction, is the subject of another lecture. We examine the early 20 th -century debate between Lenin

and others on the relationship of capitalism to imperialism and to war.

After a brief look at the policies adopted by Lenin’s Bolshevik government in the new Soviet Union, we look at a spectrum

of reactions to the crises of capitalism in the interwar era, and the new analyses to which they gave rise, from intellectuals

associated with fascism (Carl Schmitt and Hans Freyer), neoliberalism (Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek), and

ironic conservatism (Schumpeter). Then we explore the rise of welfare-state capitalism, including its intellectual origins in

social democracy, Christianity, and in the new liberalism represented by John Maynard Keynes. We explore the varieties of

postwar welfare-state capitalism (as explained by Gøsta Esping-Andersen) before turning to its foremost critics from the left

(Herbert Marcuse) and the right (Hayek).

In the 1970s, American sociologist Daniel Bell argued that capitalism was developing into a postindustrial society, yet he

thought there was a risk that the character traits promoted by contemporary culture and by the market itself might undermine

the system. The economic stagnation of the era led to the growth of analyses of the tensions between democracy and

capitalist economic growth, which we explore in the work of James M. Buchanan and Mancur Olson.

A lecture on the family and the market shows how each of these institutions continues to transform the other, and explores

the trade-offs between household labor, paid labor, and familial consumption. Later lectures examine contemporary

globalization in historical perspective, the link between capitalism and nationalism as explained by Ernest Gellner, the

varieties of contemporary capitalism, and finally the intrinsic tensions of capitalism and the reasons it has outlasted its

competitors.

By the end of the course, listeners should have a broad sense of the history of modern capitalism, an acquaintance with what

Matthew Arnold called “the best that has been thought and said” about capitalism, and an arsenal of concepts with which to

think about contemporary developments.

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