Edward S. Mason took over Thomas Nixon Carver’s course (Economics 7b Programs of Social Reconstruction) beginning in the second term of 1926-27. According to the course description, the course nominally covered the radical programmes of “socialism, communism, anarchism and the single tax”, but the memory of Henry George had faded by this time. Utopian socialism and communism together with anarchism were the focus of the course. Thanks to the student notes of Albert Gailord Hart from 1929, we are able to sketch an outline of this relatively popular advanced undergraduate/graduate course in the Harvard economics curriculum.
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Thomas Nixon Carver on handing over his course
By bringing [John D.] Black and [Pitirim] Sorokin to Harvard I was helping to make myself unnecessary. They took over two courses which I had created and developed [for agricultural economics and sociology, respectively]. I contributed further to my own elimination by relinquishing another course which I had developed and made influential—my course on methods of social reform. The tutorial system brought into the department a number of young men who were not content to be mere tutors but were anxious to give courses of their own. Among these was a promising young man—Edward S. Mason. I yielded to the suggestion that I let him take over the above-mentioned course, while I concentrated on economic theory. I was planning a course on the economic functions of government, but before I had time to offer it the time came for me to retire. I had reached the retiring age in the year 1932.
Source: Thomas Nixon Carver, Recollections of an Unplanned Life (1949), p. 212.
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Edward S. Mason remembers…
…My doctoral dissertation had been in the field of international trade, dealing with a type of price discrimination designated by the not very attractive title of “dumping.” It was submitted in 1925 but the appearance, shortly before it was completed, of a book on the same subject, and with the same title, by Jacob Viner, precluded working over the manuscript for publication. I then interested myself in the writings of 19th century socialists and published a number of articles on them in the Quarterly Journal. This trend of thought culminated in the publication of a not very good book on the Paris Commune (of 1871) in 1930. Although I continued to be interested in this field and taught for a number of years Carver’s old course on Socialism and Social Reform, my attention shifted beginning around 1930 to the area of corporations, industrial organization, and the regulation of business….
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Course Announcement
[Economics] 7b 2hf. Programmes of Social Reconstruction
Half-course (second half-year). Mon., Wed., and (at the pleasure of the instructor). Fri., at 10. Asst. Professor Mason.
A comparison of the various radical programmes, such as socialism, communism, anarchism and the single tax, the theories upon which they are based, and the grounds of their attack upon the present industrial system. An examination of the various criteria of distributive justice, and of the social utility of the institution of property. A comparison of the merits of liberalism and authoritarianism, of radicalism and conservatism. An analysis also of the present tendenccies toward equality under liberalism in this country.
Source: Official Register of Harvard University Vol. XXV, No. 29 (May 26, 1928). Division of History, Government, and Economics, 1928-29, p. 68.
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Course Enrollment
7b 2hf. Asst. Professor Mason.—Programs of Social Reconstruction.
6 Graduates, 38 Seniors, 27 Juniors, 1 Freshman, 5 Other: Total 77.
Source: Harvard University. Reports of the President and the Treasurer of Harvard College 1928-1929, p. 72.
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Course Assignments
[from Albert Gailord Hart’s student notes]
Texts and Links
Bober, Mandell Morton. Karl Marx’s Interpretation of History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927. (2nd edition, 1948).
De Man, Hendrik. Psychology of Socialism, London, Allen & Unwin. 1928 Translation of Zur Psychologie des Sozialismus. Jena, E. Diederichs, 1927.
Gide, Charles and Charles Rist. A History of Economic Doctrines from the Time of the Physiocrats to the Present Day. Translation from the second revised and augmented edition of 1913 by R. Richards. London: George G. Harrap & Company, 1915.
Skelton, Oscar Douglas. Socialism: A Critical Analysis. Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1911. [Chicago Ph.D. dissertation].
Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party (English translation authorized by Engels, 1908).
Report of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry, Britain’s Industrial Future, 1928.
Kropotkin. The Conquest of Bread (1907). Modern Science & Anarchism (1908).
Webb, Sidney and Beatrice. A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain (1920).
Lenin, V. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). The State and Revolution (1917).
Assignments as recorded in Hart’s notes
Gide & Rist II, I-III
Book II: The Antagonists.
Chapter I (Sismondi and the origins of the critical school);
Chapter II (Saint-Simon, the Saint-Simonians, and the beginnings of collectivism);
Chapter III (The associative socialists—Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, and Louis Blanc)]
M. M. Bober—[Karl] Marx[’s] Ec[sic] Int[erpretation of] Hist[ory]
Part I: The Material Basis of History
Part II: The Human Element in History
Part III: The Ideological Element in History]
Part IV. [The Trend of History]
De Man Psychology of Soc[ialism] Part I; IV 1-4. Finish De Man in April.
Communist Manifesto—Marx & Engels
Skelton’s “Socialism” I-III, VIII, IX
I: Introduction
II: The Socialist Indictment
III: The Indictment Considered
VIII: The Modern Socialist Ideal
IX: The Modern Movement
RP [reading period]
one [of]
- Report Lib[eral] Industr[ial] Committee [sic, ]
- Kropotkin. Conquest of Bread 200 [pages]
[Modern] Science & Anarchism 100 [pages] - S. Webb—Plan of [“a Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Gr[eat] Br[itain]]
- V. Lenin—Imperialism
The State and Revolution
Source: Columbia University Libraries. Manuscript Collections. Albert Gailord Hart Papers. Box 60, Folder “Mason Micro 1929”.
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Final Examination
1928-29
Harvard University
ECONOMICS 7b2
I
Write an hour on one of the following.
- Discuss the nature of the state in a capitalist and in a socialist society according to Levin.
- What does Kropotkin mean by anarchism?
- [✓] To what extent is the report of the Liberal Industrial Enquiry socialist?
- Do the essential changes proposed in Sydney Web’s “Plan,” seem to you uneconomic? Why or why not?
- Discuss Shaw’s case for the equal distribution of income.
II
Answer two including the first.
- [✓] “Marx’s recognition of the fact that profits percent tend towards equality sounded the death knell of his theory of value.” Discuss.
- [✓] “In competitive advertising we have a typical waste of the system of production for profit and one which a socialist society could quickly eliminate.” Discuss.
- “Granted the best intelligence on the part of mass production industries as to scientific analysis of demand, it still remains true that the domestic market cannot long hope to keep up with the rapidly advancing capacity of machines and skilled management to turn out goods.” Discuss.
III
Answer two including the first.
- [✓] De Man maintains that, “the desire for responsible self-government in industry, essentially democratic, is fundamentally alien to Marxist thought.” Why does he think so?
- What do the Socialists mean by economic imperialism and how do they explain it?
- [✓] Discuss the significance in socialist thought one of the following: Fourier, Proudhon, Louis Blanc, Sismondi, St. Simon.
Source: Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Albert Gailord Hart Papers, Box 60, Folder “Exams CHI Qualifying [sic]”. Note: the checkmarks indicate which questions Hart chose to answer.
Image Source: Edward S. Mason from the Harvard Classbook, 1934.