Today’s posting is a transcription of the “correlation examination” questions for the history of political and economic thought given at Harvard in May 1939.
Concentrators in Economics will have to pass in the spring their Junior year a general examination on the department of Economics, and in the spring of their Senior year an examination correlating Economics with either History or Government (this correlating exam may be abolished by 1942), and a third one on the student’s special field, which is chosen from a list of eleven, including economic theory, economic history, money and banking, industry, public utilities, public finance, labor problems, international economics, policies and agriculture.
Courses in allied fields, including Philosophy, Mathematics, History, Government, and Sociology, are suggested by the department for each of the special fields. In addition, Geography 1 is recommended in connection with international policies or agriculture.
[Source: Harvard Crimson, May 31, 1938]
A printed copy of questions for twelve A.B. examinations in economics at Harvard for the academic year 1938-39 can be found in the Lloyd A. Metzler papers at Duke’s Economists’ Papers Project.
- One Departmental Examination from the Department of Economics.
- Five Division Special Examinations.
Economic Theory,
Economic History Since 1750,
Money and Finance,
Market Organization and Control,
Labor Economics and Social Reform.
- Six Correlation Examinations given to Honors Candidates.
Economic History of Western Europe since 1750,
American Economic History,
History of Political and Economic Thought,
Public Administration and Finance,
Government Regulation of Industry,
Mathematical Economic Theory.
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If you find this posting interesting, here is the complete list of “artifacts” from the history of economics I have assembled. You can subscribe to Economics in the Rear-View Mirror below. There is also an opportunity for comment following each posting….
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DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS
CORRELATION EXAMINATION
HISTORY OF POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC THOUGHT
(Three hours)
Answer either FOUR or FIVE questions, selected from TWO or THREE groups. If questions are taken from only TWO groups, at least TWO questions must be answered in each group. If you answer FOUR questions, write about an hour on ONE of them and mark your answer “Essay.” This question will be given double weight.
A
Use a separate blue book for the questions in this part.
- “The greatest contribution of the Hellenistic Age in the field of political thought was the idea of cosmopolitanism.”
- “Dante’s De Monarchia represents both the culmination and the close of medieval political theorizing on international relations.”
- “Luther accepted the medieval conception of the social order, while at the same time rejecting all its sanctions.”
- “The Leviathan of Hobbes is the best philosophical comment on the Tudor system.”
- Who in your opinion is more typical of the eighteenth-century French thought: Montesquieu, Voltaire or Rousseau?
- “In a historical discussion of Romanticism, the term should be used in the plural, not in the singular.”
- “Hegel’s philosophy, with its emphasis on the historical continuity and collective nature of society, contributed to the growth of various types of political and social thought.”
- Discuss the impact of the theory of Evolution on the idea of Progress.
- “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is a modern version of the Enlightened Despotism.”
- “It is highly significant that the present-date dictatorships, while frankly admitting they are anti-liberal nature, all pretend that they are more democratic than the old democracies.”
B
Use a separate blue book for the questions in this part.
- To what extent are the classifications of types of governments given by Plato and Aristotle useful at the present day? What amendments or additions would you suggest?
- The theory of popular sovereignty in the Middle Ages.
- “When Machiavelli based his instruction for Princes on the freedom from restraint, it seemed to the men of his day and unheard-of innovation, a monstrous crime.”
- “What is called totalitarianism is really the rediscovery of the doctrine of sovereignty, well-established in the 16th century, by nations which have more recently come to national life and the realization of it. Nothing has been added to the doctrine except the confusion of legal omnipotence with a practical omnicompetence.”
- “It was in truth a revolutionary act when Rousseau struck out the contract of rulership from the contractual theory; but it was not wholly without preparation that this stroke fell.”
- “It is in general a necessary condition of free institutions that the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with nationalities.”
- How would you explain the weakness and inadequacy of American political thought in the period since the early years of the 19th century?
- “The idea of the totalitarian State was born in the last world war, which became a totalitarian war.”
- “The Fascist state is not legal but social; it deals with men as they are, not with legal patterns or abstractions. It does not recognize the “rights of citizens”; it offers men, services.”
C
Use a separate blue book for the questions in this part.
- “For a modern student, seeking to understand and to judge the medieval doctrines about ‘usury’, both the theoretical arguments supplied by Aristotle, and the religious attitude of the Church, are less important than certain medieval economic conditions.”
- “The basis of mercantilism was not confusion of the ideas, money and wealth, but a set of conditions which made the policy inevitable and right in that era.”
- “Few writers in history have exerted an influence upon the policies of any nation, equal to that of Adam Smith over British fiscal and commercial policy throughout the nineteenth century.”
- “The two parts of Ricardo’s system of economic theory were inconsistent; his theory of value or exchange implied, given free markets or free competition, a perfect harmony of all individual interests with one another and the public interest; but his theory of distribution, or wages, profits, and rent, implied a conflict of class-interests, in which Capital robs Labor while the Landlords Rob both.”
- “The classical tradition of economic theory is not responsible for the economic interpretation of history; for Marx was led to the latter, not at all by the ideas he borrowed from the classical economists, but wholly by Hegel’s philosophy of history, which he converted from ‘dialectical idealism,’ into his own theory of ‘dialectical materialism.’”
- “The ‘marginal utility’ and ‘productivity’ theories were invented in the late 19th century by the Austrian economists, J. B. Clark, and others, in an effort to refute Marx; and they failed to do this, because Marx had written about actual capitalism, while these new theories assumed an economic system that never did, or could, exist.”
- “The history of economic theory, in relation to that of the public policies discussed by economists, shows how small a part reason plays in the conduct of human affairs. To take only one example; although all economists have agreed, for a century, that Free Trade is beneficial, and Protection is harmful to every nation, only England heeded them for a little while, and they are now ignored on this issue, thru-out the world.”
- “The majority of the nineteenth century economists scarcely recognized, and their present-day successors are still far from understanding, the worst disease of the modern economic system, i.e., that which has caused it, ever since the outset of the industrial revolution, to break down every tenth year or so, in a world-wide depression.”
- “The ‘trust-busting’ era in American history had behind it the over-simple theory of business competition and monopoly, of the 19th century economists. But economists now possess a more realistic theory of ‘monopolistic competition,’ which may lead in time to public acceptance, and regulation of monopolies, replacing futile efforts to suppress them.”
- “The early, classical economic theory properly emphasized the ‘long-run’ effects of disturbing changes in economic conditions, which if allowed to work themselves out, usually correct the distressing, immediate effects that public opinion always wants governments to correct at once. But as more recent economic theorists have turned to ‘short-run’ analysis, they have fallen a prey, themselves, to the popular fallacies exploded by their predecessors.”
May 12, 1939.
Source: David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Lloyd A. Metzler Papers, Box 7; [Harvard University], Division of History, Government and Economics, Division Examinations for the Degree of A.B., 1938-39.