I am now about half-way through the matching of recently copied exams in economics from the Harvard University archives to their corresponding courses. The syllabus and reading assignments for the first-term of the one year course “Economics and Political Ideas in Modern Times” taught by Dr. Overton Hume Taylor at Harvard in 1948-49 have been transcribed and posted earlier. Clearly the “modern times” part of the course was left for the second semester.
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Final Examination
Economics and Political Ideas in Modern Times
Dr. Overton Hume Taylor
1948-49
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 115
Write on five questions, including No. 8; and make one answer a one-hour essay, so marked in your blue-book.
- “There are two kinds of hostility to capitalism in our culture, having different historic sources and appealing to different motives, ideas, and arguments. Marx and his followers have appropriated and inflated one kind, resting merely on the desire to see capitalism itself surpassed by a system still better able to increase material wealth and diffuse it to all men. But the other, deeper and nobler as well as more ancient, anti-capitalist philosophy is not Marxian, but Platonic and Christian; and condemns capitalism not by economic criteria but on higher, spiritual and moral grounds.” Discuss.
- “Hobbes and the ‘mercantilist’ writers of his time spelled out and accepted the logical results of the pure spirit of capitalism—individual gain-seeking—which leads through competitive anarchy and strife to monopoly, oligarchy, despotism, and a forcibly state-controlled economy and society. In contrast, a modification of capitalism was already implicit in the basic assumption of Locke, and of Adam Smith and his followers, that each individual should practice a ‘natural’, moral self-restraint in deference to the rights of others and thus make liberty for all compatible with order and the common welfare.” Discuss.
- “The eighteenth century’s optimistic, metaphysical belief in an harmonious natural order inspired the founders of what later became ‘orthodox’ economic theory. Hence the latter became and remained an optimistic theory of the ‘natural’ working of the free-competition, market economy—identifying that system’s ‘equilibrium’ with a social-economic optimum. And this rosy theory has persisted, in some quarters to the present day, in defiance of growing, factual evidence.” Discuss.
- Without going into time-consuming details, give a comprehensive general account and discussion of (a) the main psychological, ethical, and political doctrines of Bentham and his followers; (b) the main economic doctrines of Ricardo and his followers; and (c) the main similarities or common elements, possible ‘debts’ to each other, and dissimilarities of the two ‘systems’ of thought.
- Describe and discuss either (a) the English and German ‘romantic’ or (b) August Comte’s ‘positivistic’ line of attack on the classical-liberal pattern of political-and-economic thought and its ‘eighteenth century intellectual foundations.’
- “J. S. Mill tried unsuccessfully to combine, and modify into mutual consistency, the groups of ideas he derived from Bentham and Ricardo, from the English Romanticists, from Comte, and from early socialism.” Discuss.
- “Intellectual Marxism is an incongruous mixture of two things which are poles apart — German metaphysics and English economics. The ‘inverted Hegelian’ philosophy of history, and the distorted Ricardian economic theory of labor-value, surplus value, and evolving capitalism, are separate, unrelated lines of thought on different levels. Yet the combination supports a very powerful, impressive explanation of the past and forecast of the future.” Discuss.
- On the basis of your ‘reading period’ reading in Schumpeter or Sweezy, give your own account and discussion of either (a) Schumpeter’s thesis about how capitalism is being destroyed by the social, cultural, and political results of its very merits; or (b) Sweezy’s thesis about the causes, nature, and significance of fascism.
Final. January, 1949.
Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Final Examinations, 1853-2001 (HUC 7000.28, Box 16 of 284). Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Papers Printed for Final Examinations: History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science, February, 1949.
Image Source: Overton Hume Taylor in Harvard Album, 1952.