|
|
|
CAPITALISM: |
|
The Clearest and
Most Comprehensive Contemporary Defense of the Capitalist
Economic System Available |
Literature and Lectures by Edith Packer, George Reisman, and Others |
|
|
|
|
|
LECTURES BY GEORGE REISMAN
on CDs,
in mp3 format.
All of the following lectures make an excellent accompaniment to
Reisman's
Capitalism—in
fact, almost all of them represent draft versions of important parts
of Capitalism. In combination, they cover most of the
material presented in the book. Thus, they can provide powerful
reinforcement to the reading of Capitalism. (Taken all
together, they constitute
the core of
Reisman's Program of Self-Education in the Economic Theory and Political
Philosophy of Capitalism 2.0.)
List of titles, with links to detailed descriptions
*This series supersedes the two series previously drawn from it
in the audiotape version,
namely, Inflation and
the Quantity Theory of Money
and
The Government
Against the Economy.
**This series has been enlarged from
ten to twenty lectures, and increased in running time from 141/2
hours to 241/2 hours.
Return to top of page. Return to Reisman's Program.
The series begins by proving that only the government's increase in the quantity of money can explain generally rising prices and that all other explanations are either completely wrong or, to the extent they have any validity whatever, only serve to confirm that the cause of rising prices is the government's increase in the quantity of money. It then goes on to show in detail that while the uncontrolled price system of a free market coordinates productive activities and progressively raises the general standard of living, price controls, the classic response to the rising prices caused by the government's inflation of the money supply, cause shortages and economic chaos and culminate in a totalitarian socialist dictatorship. The contents of the lectures are as follows:
1. The Cause of Rising Prices. The quantity theory of money and its significance. Proof that the government's expansion of the money supply is the cause of rising prices.
2. Refutation of the Alternative Explanations. The “cost-push” doctrine and its variants. The attempts to blame rising prices on labor unions, big business, and various crises.
3. The Refutation Continued. The “velocity of circulation” argument. Blaming “inflation psychology,” credit cards, installment credit and the “greed” of consumers. The Free Market. The profit motive and its economic consequences.
4. The Free Market Continued. The growing abundance of natural resources. Prices and costs. The equalization of prices over space and time. Wage rates. Why the Arab oil embargo would not have been a threat to a free economy.
5. The Free Market Further Continued. The pricing and distribution of goods and services in limited supply. Why shortages cannot exist in a free market. The rationality of the free market in distributing goods and services in limited supply.
6. Price Controls. Shortages and the destruction of vital industries: the examples of rental housing and the electric utilities. How the government and the ecology movement caused the oil shortage and made possible the success of the Arab cartel.
7. Price Controls Continued. Chaos in production and distribution. How controls on some goods cause higher prices on other goods and actually raise the general price level. Why controls tend to spread until all prices and wages are controlled.
8. Universal Price Controls and Their Consequences. Government control of production and distribution. De facto socialism.
9. Socialism and Why It Must Fail. The state's monopoly of production and its consequences. The destruction of individual freedom. Why socialism must be totalitarian.
Return to top of page. Return to Reisman's Program.
|
|
This 8-lecture series was originally delivered at the first Jefferson School summer conference, in 1983. It served as a draft for parts of Chapters 4 and 5 of Capitalism and for all of Chapter 9. It was recently recorded for the first time, in order to be made available as part of version 2.0. Each of the lectures is approximately one hour in length. No Q&A. Price: $49.95. |
The series explains the leading economic institutions
of a capitalist society in terms of their nature,
origin, functioning, and mutual interconnection. Among
the subjects discussed are rational self-interest,
economic freedom and limited government, private
property, saving and capital accumulation, exchange and
money, the division of labor, economic competition and
economic inequality, the profit motive and the price
system, economic progress, and the nature of productive
activity. Numerous popular misconceptions are
refuted, and all of capitalism's institutions are shown
to promote the life and well-being of everyone.
1. The Division of Labor. The gains from the division of labor: the multiplication of knowledge; the benefit from geniuses; concentration on individual advantages. geographical specialization. economies of learning and motion. the use of machinery. The appropriateness of the division of labor. The division of labor and society. The assault on the division of labor.
2. The Dependence of the Division of Labor on the Institutions of Capitalism. The specific dependence on: private property; saving and capital accumulation; exchange and. money (digression on the origin and evolution of money); economic competition;. economic inequality; the profit motive and the price system.
3. The Influence of the Division of Labor on the Institutions of Capitalism I. The general benefit from private property. The increasing general benefit from private property via saving and capital accumulation, profit and loss incentives, and the freedom of competition. Economic efficiency as a cause of capital accumulation—application to Soviet Russia and socialism. The capitalists' special benefit from private property. A critique of redistributionism and government ownership.
4. The Influence of the Division of Labor on the Institutions of Capitalism I continued. The general benefit from the institution of inheritance. The inheritance and income taxes. Private ownership of land and “land rent.” The conservation doctrine.
5. The Influence of the Division of Labor on the Institutions of Capitalism I further continued. The violent appropriation doctrine. Land reform. Territorial sovereignty. Foreign “exploitation.” The Influence of the Division of Labor on the Institutions of Capitalism II. Economic inequality.
6. The Influence of the Division of Labor on the Institutions of Capitalism II continued. The Marxian doctrine on economic inequality: a critique. Economic inequality under socialism. The “equality of opportunity” doctrine: a critique.
7. The Influence of the Division of Labor on the Institutions of Capitalism III. The nature of economic competition. The short-run loss periods. The true advocates of the law of the jungle. Economic competition and economic security. The law of comparative advantage. The pyramid of ability principle.
8. The Influence of the Division of Labor on the Institutions of Capitalism III continued. The population question. Worldwide free trade. Free trade and the economic superiority of The United States over Western Europe. International free trade and domestic laissez faire. The birth rate and free immigration.
Return to top of page. Return to Reisman's Program.
THREE LECTURE SERIES ON “MACROECONOMICS”
In combination, the following three series accompany Chapters 11
and 13-17 of CAPITALISM.
“Macroeconomics” focuses on the study of
economic phenomena that are system-wide in their
nature—for example, general business depressions, general
economic progress, the general level of real wages, and
the average rate of profit and interest. The currently
prevailing ideas on the subject are those of Keynes and
Marx. In sharpest contrast, the following three
lecture series present a procapitalist approach to
the subject that is inspired by the ideas of the British
classical and Austrian economists and incorporates many of
Dr. Reisman's own, original contributions. They show that
laissez-faire capitalism is both free of general business
depressions and is characterized by a steadily rising
level of real wages as the result precisely of the
activities of businessmen and capitalists.
1. Production Versus Consumption. The fundamental problem of economic life is how to increase human productive ability so that more wealth can be produced by limited labor. It is not how to increase the need for wealth or to create employment. The contrasting implications of these conflicting premises for the assessment of the economic effects of machinery, war, government spending, population growth, and advertising.
2. Say's Law. Purchasing power—real demand—is created by supply. And on a gold standard, so too is monetary demand—the ability to spend money. A general overproduction is impossible and can never be the cause of depressions. No matter how much production increases, overproduction can at most be a phenomenon confined to just part of the economic system and is always accompanied by a precisely equivalent underproduction elsewhere. When it does occur, it can usually be eliminated by an increase in production in other industries. Falling prices caused by rising production do not represent deflation.
3. Government Intervention as the Cause of Unemployment. Unemployment is not caused by any lack of need or desire for wealth or for the labor to produce it, but by wages and prices that are held too high relative to the quantity of money and the volume of spending that the quantity of money can support. Government intervention is responsible for the creation and perpetuation of the imbalance. Why World War II was accompanied by full employment and why such full employment represented a major economic loss for the great majority of American workers.
4. The Productivity Theory of Wages. A critique of the exploitation theory: why both workers' needs and employers' “greed” are irrelevant to the wages workers actually have to accept. Money wages are determined mainly by the relationship between the quantity of money and the supply of labor. Real wages are determined mainly by the productivity of labor.
5. The Role of Businessmen and Capitalists in Raising Real Wages. Real wages as the product of the productivity of labor and of wage payments relative to consumption spending. How the saving and productive expenditure of businessmen and capitalists increase the economic system's concentration on the production of capital goods, which in turn raises the productivity of labor. How their competitive quest for profits achieves the same result. How their saving and productive expenditure raises wages relative to consumption spending. How the activities of businessmen and capitalists, in turn, depend on the existence of a free and rational society.
6. Application of the Productivity Theory of Wages to the Interpretation of Modern Economic History. The low standard of living of the early years of capitalism was the result of a low productivity of labor, inherited from centuries of stagnation under feudalism. The rise in the standard of living, increasingly evident as the nineteenth century wore on, was the result of a rising productivity of labor achieved by the activities of businessmen and capitalists. The higher real wages brought about in this way were responsible for the elimination of child labor, the shortening of the working day, and the improvement in working conditions. Government intervention, far from being the cause of the average person's economic gains, as is usually believed, necessarily operated to hold down the rise in real wages and the benefits resulting from it. Price: $49.95.
Return to top of
page. Return to Reisman's Program.
1. Basic Concepts. Definitions of such fundamental concepts as productive expenditure and consumption expenditure, capital goods and consumers' goods. Adam Smith's positive contribution to the concept of productive activity and his contradictory development of the conceptual framework of the Marxian exploitation theory.
2. The Marxian Exploitation Theory. Marx's version of the labor theory of value and the “iron law” of wages. How profits are made to appear as essentially the same as the gains of slave owners. The exploitation theory as the theoretical basis of the economic policies of the contemporary “liberals.”
3. Böhm-Bawerk's Critique of the Exploitation Theory. Exposition of the leading critique of Marx as developed by a father of the Austrian school of economics. The time preference theory of profit/interest. Böhm-Bawerk's fundamental concessions to the exploitation theory.
4. Reisman's Theory of Profit/Interest vs. the Framework of the Exploitation Theory. How business in the aggregate generates sales revenues greater than costs. Profits, not wages, as the original and primary form of income. Businessmen do not deduct profits from wages, but are responsible for the creation of wages, which along with other costs, are a deduction from sales revenues, all of which were originally profit. Businessmen and capitalists as the primary workers in the economic system.
5. Specific Productive Functions in the Light of the Division of Labor. The division of labor as the explanatory principle of the specific productive functions of businessmen and capitalists, the financial markets and financial institutions, retailing, wholesaling, and advertising.
6. Further Development of Reisman's Theory of Profit/Interest. Say's Law II: not only does production create purchasing power, but also the productive process itself is what generates monetary profitability. Radical implications for the role of saving and technological progress in the process of capital accumulation.
Return to top of page. Return to Reisman's Program.
1. Methodological/Epistemological Introduction. Elements of sound economic theorizing: the proper treatment of money; the Aristotelian view of entities held by the British classical economists versus the Platonic-Heraclitean view of entities held by contemporary economists. Implications for the conception of aggregate production, aggregate spending, and the role of saving and productive expenditure versus consumption expenditure. Overthrow of the foundations of Keynesian economics.
2. Capital Accumulation and Its Causes. Saving and the relative demand for and production of capital goods. Technological progress and general economic efficiency as causes of capital accumulation. The fundamental role of economic freedom. Demonstration that in the absence of increases in the quantity of money, national income and capital accumulation are inversely related. Overthrow of the Keynesian doctrines of the balanced budget multiplier and the “conservatives' dilemma.”
3. The Average Rate of Profit and Interest Under a Fixed Quantity of Money. Saving and productive expenditure as the source of equivalent sales revenues and costs deducted from sales revenues. Net consumption—essentially the consumption expenditure of businessmen and capitalists (financed by dividends, draw payments, and interest)—as the source of sales revenues in excess of productive expenditure and costs. The rate of net consumption as a manifestation of time preference.
4. The Average Rate of Profit and Interest Under an Increasing Quantity of Money. The rate of increase in the quantity of money and volume of spending as the source of an equivalent addition to the nominal rate of profit. The rate of increase in the production and supply of goods as the source of an equivalent addition to the real rate of profit. Why capital accumulation does not require a failing rate of profit. Why falling prices caused by increased production do not reduce the rate of profit or constitute deflation. Genuine deflation as a reduction in the quantity of money/volume of spending.
5. Further Applications of Reisman's Theory. Baselessness of the hostility to profits and interest. The fundamental neutrality of technological progress with respect to the average rate of profit. How taxes on profits and interest raise the pre-tax rate of profit and interest and simultaneously undermine capital accumulation and economic progress. How government budget deficits do the same. Mitigation of the harmful effects of government budget deficits by means of foreign investment and an excess of imports over exports. Why large fortunes under capitalism are a reflection of low consumption and high efficiency on the part of their owners.
6. Further Development of the Theory. Net investment and the rate of profit. The relationship between net investment and the increase in the quantity of money. The concept of the average period of production and why it need not go on lengthening as a condition of economic progress. Critique of underconsumptionism—how the demand for capital goods can permanently exceed the demand for consumers' goods and yet business is not in the contradictory position of buying for more at the same time that it sells for less. Why savings cannot outrun the uses for savings. Saving and the process of capital intensification. Depressions not caused by saving but by the need of business firms to increase holdings of money, which they have been led to run down by a government created environment of inflation and credit expansion.
Return to top of
page. Return to Reisman's Program.
1. Wealth and Its Role in Human Life. Wealth and goods. Economics and wealth. The limitless need and desire for wealth, or human reason and the scope and perfectibility of need satisfactions. Progress and happiness. The objectivity of economic progress: a critique of the doctrines of cultural relativism and conspicuous consumption. The objective value of a division-of-labor, capitalist society.
2. Wealth and Natural Resources. The law of diminishing marginal utility and the limitless need for wealth. “Scarcity” and the transformation of its nature under capitalism. The ineradicable scarcity of human labor. The limitless potential of natural resources. The energy crisis. The limitless potential of natural resources and the law of diminishing returns. Diminishing returns and the need for economic progress. Conservationism: a critique.
3. The Ecological Assault on Economic Progress. The hostility to economic progress. The claims of the environmental movement and its pathology of fear and hatred. The actual nature of industrial civilization. The environmental movement's hatred of it. The toxicity of environmentalism. The collectivist bias of environmentalism. Environmentalism and the externalities doctrine. The economic and philosophic significance of environmentalism. Environmentalism, the intellectuals, and socialism.
4. Environmentalism and Irrationalism. Environmentalism, the intellectuals, and socialism continued. Irrational skepticism. The destructive role of contemporary education. The cultural devaluation of man. Objectivism as the intellectual antidote to environmentalism.
5. The Political Concept of Monopoly. The prevailing, economic concept of monopoly. The contrasting, political concept of monopoly, which is consistent with individual rights. The Objectivist framework. The meaning of freedom. Freedom and government. Freedom as the foundation of security. The indivisibility of economic and political freedom. The rational versus the anarchic concept of freedom. Monopoly versus freedom of competition. The meaning of freedom of competition. High capital requirements as an indicator of low prices and the intensity of competition. The political concept of monopoly and its application. Monopoly based on exclusive government franchises.
6. The Political
Concept of Monopoly and Its Application Continued.
Licensing law monopoly. Tariff
monopoly. The monopolistic protection of the inefficient
many against the competition of the more efficient few or
even just one. Monopoly based on minimum wage and prounion
legislation: the exclusion of the less able and the
disadvantaged. Government owned and government subsidized
enterprises as monopoly. The antitrust laws as promonopoly
legislation. Socialism as the ultimate form of monopoly.
Further implications of the political concept of monopoly.
Monopoly prices and high costs rather than high profits.
Why patents and copyrights, and trademarks and brand
names, are not monopolies.
Return to top of page. Return to Reisman's Program.
|
The lectures, along with their original year of recording, individual running times, and correspondence to chapters in Capitalism are listed below. Except as noted, all the lectures contain a question-and-answer period.
|
Important note on mp3 format, conventional CDs, audiotapes, and your copying rights. Please read.
CDs in mp3 format play on CD drives in computers, on DVD players, on mp3 CD players, and on mp3 hard drive players, such as Apple's iPod, HP's iRiver, and Dell's Digital Jukebox. They do not play on conventional CD players, including those found in most present-day automobiles, though mp3 players can be installed in automobiles. (For more information on any of these categories of mp3 player, please search on Google, using the strings "mp3 player" or "mp3 player + automobile".)
The great advantage of mp3 files in comparison with standard CD files, namely, files in "wav" format, is that they require only about ten percent of the disk space. Reisman's program in conventional CD format would require more than 110 disks instead of the present ten. Their advantage in comparison with audiotapes is that they have far longer life, as do CDs in wav format, and also take up far less volume. The new, version 2.0 of Reisman's Program, despite its 25 percent greater lecture content, fits in just one 6 1/2" by 5 1/2" by 1" CD album instead of the seven, much larger audiotape albums that were previously necessary. And one of these CDs contains the manual and lecture supplements that previously had to be printed, as well as 2500 newly created short answer questions on capitalism. (The Adobe Acrobat Reader necessary to access this material is included on the CD.)
Please know that TJS authorizes you to copy the mp3 files from its CDs to an mp3 player's hard drive or, if you own the necessary software, convert its mp3 files to wav files and burn your own conventional CDs. (Such software is inexpensive and often can be downloaded over the internet. To find sites that sell it, search on Google using the string "mp3 to wav".) You are also authorized, indeed, encouraged, to make a backup copy of each CD you purchase, and, of course, you can keep a copy on your computer's hard drive.
In addition, you are authorized to make your own audiotapes from TJS's mp3 files. To do so, you need to run a 1/8 inch cable from where you would normally attach your computer's speakers to the microphone input on your tape recorder. Then just simply play the file on your computer and press the record button on your tape recorder. Such a cable is very inexpensive and can be purchased at any Radio Shack or comparable store.
All these permissions pertain to duplication for your personal use only. No authorization is given to duplicate and give files away to others with or without charge.
Return to top of page. Return to Reisman's Program.