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Harvard. Programs of Social and Economic Reconstruction, Leontief and Taylor. 1942-43

This course on socio-economic reform and revolution was team taught the previous year by Wassily Leontief, Paul Sweezy and Overton Taylor. Sweezy took leave from Harvard to join the War effort so he was unavailable for the 1942-43 version of this course that has been in the Harvard economics course catalogue almost as long as courses in public finance and labor problems.

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Course Enrollment

[Economics] 115. Associate Professor Leontief and Dr. O. H. Taylor.—Programs of Social and Economic Reconstruction.

Total 10: 3 Graduates, 1 Junior, 1 School of Public Administration, 4 Radcliffe.

 

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of the Departments for 1942-43, p. 47.

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Course Assignments

Reading for the Monday Oct. 19 Meeting of Ec 115

Bastiat Frédéric. Harmonies of Political Economy, pp. 1-46, 196-217.

Sismondi, Simond de. Essays on Political Economy, pp. 113-122, 224-244. (Nouveaux Principes d’Economie Politique, Vol. I and II[,] to browse For those who read French)

Gray, John. A Lecture on Human Happiness, pp. 1-72.

Clark, J. B. Distribution of Wealth, pp. 36-76.

Carver. Essays in Social Justice, pp. 232-263.

Keynes, J. M.  The General Theory of Interest and Employment, pp. 372-384.

 

Economics 115
Assignment for October 26

  1. Handbook of Marxism, pp. 313-38.
  2. Capital, Vol. I, Ch. X, Sections 1, 2, 5, 6.
  3. Marx-Engels Selected Correspondence, Letter no. 214.
  4. Lenin, State and Revolution.
  5. J. Laski, The State in Theory and Practice, Ch. 2.

 

Economics 115
November 2, 1942
Social and Economic Theories of the New Deal

  1. Immediate Background
  2. New Deal Movement as a Dynamic Organism of Diverse Potentialities
  3. Specific Analysis of the Program Adopted
  4. Significance of the New Deal
  5. Where did the New Deal Fail?

Assignment

Background for those who need it:

A. M. Schlesinger, New Deal in Action
or
R. H. Jackson, The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy

For everyone:

Golden and Ruttenberg, The Dynamics of Industrial Democracy, pp. 317-42.
Robert and Helen Lynd, Middletown in Transition, Chs. IV, XII.
C. A. Beard, Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, pp. 149-188.
F. D. Roosevelt, Papers and Addresses, Vol. I, nos. 139, 141; Vol. II, nos. 1, 50, 101; Vol. III, nos. 1, 102; Vol. V, nos. 1, 53, 176.

Also recommended:

Thurman Arnold, Folklore of Capitalism
Thorstein Veblen, Absentee Ownership

 

Economics 115
November 9, 1942
The Revisionist Movement in German Socialism

  1. The beginnings of reformist socialism in Germany
  2. Bernstein and the Revisionist offensive
  3. The counterattack and the split on the Left
  4. The social roots of reformism
  5. German Social-Democracy vs. socialism: 1914, 1919, 1933

Assignment

Eduard Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism, pp. ix-xviii, 1-94, 165-199
Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution
M. Philips Price, Germany in Transition, pp. 18-47

 

Economics 115
Assignment for Nov. 16, 1942

CLASSICAL LIBERALISM AND NEO-LIBERALISM
–A Comparison and a Critique—

  1. The historical development of Liberalism.
  2. Common elements in both types of Liberalism.
  3. Political implications of the divergence.
  4. Neo-Liberalism — Will it work?

Assignment:-

J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. V, ch. 11.
Herbert Spencer, Social Statics (Abridged Edition, D. Appleton & Co., 1892) pp. 55-61, 121-140.
Walter Lippman, The Good Society, chs. 10 and 11.
Henry Simon, Positive Program for Laissez-Faire.
Max Lerner, It is Later Than You Think, Chs. 1 and 6.
J. M. Keynes, The End of Laissez-Faire, pp. 39-54.

Suggestions for those who may wish to go further into the problem:-

John Dewey, Liberalism and Social Action.
Articles “The Rise of Liberalism” and “Individualism and Capitalism” in the Introduction to The Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.
Thorstein Veblen, “Preconceptions of Economic Science,” in The Place of Science in Modern Civilization.

 

Economics 115
Assignment for November 23, 1942
The Economic Doctrines of the Bolsheviks

  1. The relationship between Marxism and Bolshevism—Marxism restored and militant.
  2. The Bolshevik elaboration of the Marxian theory of capitalist development; its application to the analysis of the period of monopoly capitalism or imperialism.
    1. The transition from free competition to monopoly as a result of the concentration and centralization of capital.
    2. Finance capital and the role of the banks.
    3. The struggle for markets, for raw materials and for outlets for capital export and the resulting tariff and colonial policy of imperialism
    4. The growth of international cartels and the ‘theory’ of ultra-imperialism.
    5. The progressive intensification of the contradictions of capitalism — crises, wars and catastrophe.
    6. The proletarian revolution as the only way out.
  3. The political implications of the Bolshevik analysis of imperialism — the working class must gird itself for a struggle à outrance for the overthrow of world capitalism and the establishment of a socialist order.

Assigned Reading

Lenin: Imperialism.
P. M. Sweezy: The Theory of Capitalist Development, Part IV.

Suggested Reading

Marx-Engels: The Communist Manifesto.
Marx: Value, Price and Profit, Chapter VI to the end.
Lenin: The Proletarian Revolution.

 

Economics 115
The Theory of Marx and Engels Concerning the Transition From Capitalism to Socialism
November 30, 1942

  1. Sources and Constituent Parts of Marxism
  2. Class-Domination Theory of the State
  3. The Overthrow of the Bourgeois State by Revolution
  4. Establishment of Proletarian Dictatorship — First Phase of the Communistic Society
  5. Withering Away of Proletarian State and the Higher Phase of the Communistic Society

Assignment:

Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, pp. 9-15.
Burns, A Handbook of Marxism, pp. 537-570.
Engels, The Origin of the Family, Chap. 9.
Lenin, The State and Revolution, Chaps. 1 and 5.
Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, Chap. 3.
Engels, Landmarks of Scientific Socialism, Chap. 9.
Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program.

Suggested:

Chang, Sherman, The Marxian Theory of the State.

 

Economics 115
January 3, 1943
Socialism In The British Labour Party

  1. A definition of the term Socialism
  2. Necessary reforms arising from frictions of the Industrial Revolution
  3. Socialist gains acquired through self-interest of pressure groups
  4. Growth of the Labour Party
  5. Socialism as a policy of the Labour Party
  6. Socialist administrations
  7. Future of Socialism in England

Assignment

Clifford Allen, Labour’s Future At Stake.
G. D. H. Cole, British Working Class Politics, Epilogue.
Arthur Greenwood, M. P., The Labour Outlook.
J. Ramsy McDonald, A Policy for the Labour Party.

Optional

Arthur Henderson, The Aims of Labour.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003, Box 3, Folder “Economics, 1942-43 (2 of 2)”.

Image Source: Leontief and Taylor from Harvard Class Album 1939.