Political Theory and the Economy

Harvard FAS

We all know what politics is about: “it’s the economy stupid.” But what is the economy? From its origins in the conjunction of two Greek words, oikos (household) and nomos (custom, law), this course will take a whirlwind tour across the history of political and economic thought, from Aristotle to Smith to Marx to Keynes to Hayek, to see how changing notions of economics have constrained or expanded the horizon of politics. Are we appendages on an inhuman machine or…