Thinking about Capitalism

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LIMITED TIME OFFER: Save More Than 50% Off the Monthly Plan with this Annual Plan Special Offer! Offer Ends 06/22/2025.

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LIMITED TIME OFFER: Save More Than 50% Off the Monthly Plan with this Annual Plan Special Offer! Offer Ends 06/22/2025.

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LIMITED TIME OFFER: Save More Than 50% Off the Monthly Plan with this Annual Plan Special Offer! Offer Ends 06/22/2025.

Learn More

LIMITED TIME OFFER: Save More Than 50% Off the Monthly Plan with this Annual Plan Special Offer! Offer Ends 06/22/2025.

Learn More

LIMITED TIME OFFER: Save More Than 50% Off the Monthly Plan with this Annual Plan Special Offer! Offer Ends 06/22/2025.

Learn More

LIMITED TIME OFFER: Save More Than 50% Off the Monthly Plan with this Annual Plan Special Offer! Offer Ends 06/22/2025.

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LIMITED TIME OFFER: Save More Than 50% Off the Monthly Plan with this Annual Plan Special Offer! Offer Ends 06/22/2025.

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LIMITED TIME OFFER: Save More Than 50% Off the Monthly Plan with this Annual Plan Special Offer! Offer Ends 06/22/2025.

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SHOW

01: Why Think about Capitalism?

You consider how capitalism works, its political prerequisites, and its political, moral, and cultural ramifications through key elements of capitalism and its origins.

31 min

02: The Greek and Christian Traditions

You learn how modern Western intellectuals have evaluated capitalism by starting with the two great premodern traditions: the civic republican tradition and the Christian tradition.

29 min

03: Hobbes's Challenge to the Traditions

Hobbes criticized these traditions, emphasizing happiness in this world as the goal of government and refuting the notion that government exists to guide us to some shared purpose or highest ideal.

30 min

04: Dutch Commerce and National Power

In the 17th century, the Dutch Republic provided an example of a highly commercial society of increasing power, leading European thinkers to reformulate civic republicanism in a more commercial direction.

30 min

05: Capitalism and Toleration—Voltaire

In his "Letters on England (1734)," Voltaire argued that commerce provides a means for people of different orientations to cooperate.

32 min

06: Abundance or Equality—Voltaire vs. Rousseau

Enlightenment thinkers debated the moral status of material well-being. Voltaire argued that the abundance created by commerce was the basis of civilization. Rousseau countered that material progress had increased inequality and undermined virtue.

31 min

07: Seeing the Invisible Hand—Adam Smith

In "The Wealth of Nations," Adam Smith explained how a competitive market could channel self-interest into socially beneficial directions.

31 min

08: Smith on Merchants, Politicians, Workers

Smith argued that capitalism diverged from his competitive model, with each economic group trying to use its political power to promote its own interest. He urged policymakers to promote competitive markets that served the "general" interest.

31 min

09: Smith on the Problems of Commercial Society

Smith's influence was probably greatest in arguing against government's direct economic involvement, but Smith, in fact, believed that a well-functioning government was the only source of many essential functions for a commercial society.

31 min

10: Smith on Moral and Immoral Capitalism

You explore Smith's views on how a capitalist society could make people better off but that lack of the rule of law, or inequality before it, could cause commerce to lead to immoral outcomes.

30 min

11: Conservatism and Advanced Capitalism—Burke

Edmund Burke offered a conservative analysis of the hazards posed by some forms of capitalism. His "Reflections on the Revolution in France" (1790) remains the most influential work of conservative thought ever published.

31 min

12: Conservatism and Periphery Capitalism—Möser

Justus Möser is an example of a conservative in a largely pre commercial society, for whom the spread of international capitalism was a threat to existing ways of life.

31 min

13: Hegel on Capitalism and Individuality

This lecture introduces you to Hegel's ideas about capitalism, individuality, and how institutions foster individuality.

31 min

14: Hamilton, List, and the Case for Protection

You encounter two voices in the early debate over free international trade: Alexander Hamilton, who made the case for protecting infant industries, and Friedrich List, who developed Hamilton's ideas into a national industrial policy.

30 min

15: De Tocqueville on Capitalism in America

Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" explores the propensity toward individualism and materialism in America and the countervailing influence of republican institutions and religion.

33 min

16: Marx and Engels—"The Communist Manifesto"

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels concluded that industrial capitalism profited only the wealthy while leading to the material and moral degradation of the masses. Nevertheless, in "The Communist Manifesto" (1848), they also recognized capitalism's achievements and possibilities.

32 min

17: Marx's "Capital" and the Degradation of Work

Marx spent most of the decades after "The Communist Manifesto" working on his comprehensive analysis of the capitalist economy. Although he provided a searing portrait of the industrial factory's degradation of labor, he overlooked the trends that argued against his theory.

30 min

18: Matthew Arnold on Capitalism and Culture

The British poet and cultural critic Matthew Arnold was concerned about "Philistinism"—spiritual and cultural narrowing in a capitalist society and the spill-over effect of applying a narrowly utilitarian, market mentality to other areas.

30 min

19: Individual and Community—Tönnies vs. Simmel

In the last third of the 19th century, a newly unified Germany went through a process of capitalist transformation, leading to debate about capitalism's social, cultural, and political ramifications.

30 min

20: The German Debate over Rationalization

Georg Simmel, Max Weber, and Werner Sombart offered three different perspectives on the cultural and spiritual effects of the spread of capitalism and its ideas of rationality and calculation.

30 min

21: Cultural Sources of Capitalism—Max Weber

You examine the cultural sources of disparate group success under capitalism, with special focus on Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (1905) and Sombart's "The Jews and Modern Capitalism" (1911).

30 min

22: Schumpeter on Innovation and Resentment

Joseph Schumpeter was among the most wide-ranging analysts of capitalism. But unlike most mainstream economists of his day, Schumpeter focused on the role of entrepreneurs, whose dynamism, he believed, caused resentment of capitalism.

32 min

23: Lenin's Critique—Imperialism and War

You examine Vladimir Lenin's idea that capitalism fosters imperialism and related arguments by the British liberal John Hobson and Marxists Rudolf Hilferding and Rosa Luxembourg, before taking up a refutation offered by Schumpeter.

33 min

24: Fascists on Capitalism—Freyer and Schmitt

This lecture looks at the critiques of the Weimar Republic's liberal democracy by political analyst Carl Schmitt and sociologist Hans Freyer, who argued that capitalist democracy posed a threat to effective government and national power.

31 min

25: Mises and Hayek on Irrational Socialism

This lecture looks at ideas about the importance of markets introduced by Ludwig von Mises and further developed by his student, Friedrich von Hayek, whose neo-liberal approach focused on individual liberty and the restriction of government. Hayek's theories about the roots of Fascism and the link between anti-Semitism and anticapitalism are also examined.

30 min

26: Schumpeter on Capitalism's Self-Destruction

You focus on Schumpeter's version of the notion that capitalism ignites processes that destroy its institutional foundations set forth in his "Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy."

32 min

27: The Rise of Welfare-State Capitalism

Perhaps the most important transformation of capitalism in the mid-20th century was the development of welfare-state capitalism. This lecture explores its origins and the varieties of welfare-state capitalism that developed after World War II.

33 min

28: Pluralism as Limit to Social Justice—Hayek

This lecture examines Hayek's conception of the links between capitalism and Liberalism, which called into question many of the premises of those who wanted to use the welfare state to shape society.

32 min

29: Herbert Marcuse and the New Left Critique

During the 1960s, Herbert Marcuse's most influential work analyzed contemporary capitalism's ability to keep the masses quiescent by manipulating their needs.

32 min

30: Contradictions of Postindustrial Society

In the 1970s, Daniel Bell argued that America had entered a postindustrial age and that capitalism undermined the work ethic, frugality, and deferred gratification that it depended on.

31 min

31: The Family under Capitalism

This lecture examines some useful conceptual frameworks for thinking about the links between capitalism and the family.

33 min

32: Tensions with Democracy—Buchanan and Olson

You explore James M. Buchanan's critique of Keynesianism based on public choice theory and Mancur Olson's explanation of how the logic of collective action could lead to economic stagnation.

32 min

33: End of Communism, New Era of Globalization

This lecture explores the origins and nature of the newest era of globalization and puts it into historical perspective.

33 min

34: Capitalism and Nationalism—Ernest Gellner

An interpretation of modern history argues that the processes that made capitalism possible also led to changes in personal identity that made nationalism attractive.

33 min

35: The Varieties of Capitalism

You examine capitalist societies from five perspectives - political structures, types of welfare states, developmental strategies, forms of business, and extent of equality.

33 min

36: Intrinsic Tensions in Capitalism

Why has capitalism been so productive and innovative, and why has it outlasted its competitors, such as Socialism? You look at some recent thinking on this and at some intrinsic tensions in capitalism.

32 min

Overview Course No. 5665

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 save, and every other aspect of a society based on monetary exchanges for goods and services. But how much do you really know about capitalism?

In these 36 engaging lectures, Professor Jerry Muller of The Catholic University of America takes you deep inside the perspectives on this most important and pervasive force. You'll gain fresh insights that will strengthen your understanding of capitalism's rich history, its fascinating proponents and opponents, and its startling impact on our world.

These lectures take you beyond economic analysis to look at how some of the greatest intellects have thought about capitalism and its moral, political, and cultural ramifications. Covering capitalism from its 17th-century beginnings to today's era of globalization, Professor Muller explores some wide-ranging questions. What effect does capitalism have on personal development? What about the unending variety of consumer goods made possible by capitalism? Do the facts support our tendency to think about capitalism as the economic system practiced in "free" countries? Or can capitalism exist in a wide variety of political systems?

By placing capitalism in its full context, these lectures will enhance your ability to consider, discuss, and answer these and other critical questions - whatever your point of view.

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About

Jerry Z. Muller

When I was growing up, I worked in a number of family businesses, but I didn’t want to go into business. I wanted to be an intellectual, to learn about and reflect on the interconnection of things.

ALMA MATER

Columbia University

INSTITUTION

The Catholic University of America

Dr. Jerry Z. Muller is Professor of History at The Catholic University of America, where he has taught since 1984. He earned 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. Dr. Muller wrote The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European 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. He is 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.