Comparative Economic Thought Essay - The purpose of this paper is for students to infer what each of the following thinkers', Joseph Schumpeter, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes, would have to say about one of two contemporary issues : 1. the power of large capitalist firms over social media platforms or 2. the global environmental crisis/ climate change . These papers must be in the range of 750 - 1000 words long and are due February 10 th at 11:59 pm. Joseph Schumpeter, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes are all thinkers with huge bodies of work and many concepts they developed that can be interpreted in different ways. The most important aspect of this paper is for students to demonstrate that they understand that the main thrust of the ideas of these thinkers , and most importantly, how they differ from one another . Based on the ideas of the three thinkers, students must develop their argument about what each of these three thinkers would have to sa y about one of the two current issues. There are different ways to interpret the arguments and theories of these thinkers and not one ‘correct’ way to do so. Th rough these essays, students should use the concepts and theories they developed based on the readings assigned for each week and/ or the documentaries to interpret and infer what the perspective of each of these thinkers would have to say about one of the two contemporary issues . S tudents should consider what each thinker might believ e based on their ideas and theories and/ or what political actions or policy changes they might suggest in addressing , or not addressing one of these two contemporary issues. The following excerpts from the readings provide a summary of the main ideas an d arguments of each thinker and students can use these quotes to help them infer what each thinker would think about the respective contemporary issues. Joseph Schumpeter “If we list the items that enter the modern workman’s budget and from 1899 on observe the course of their prices not in terms of money but in terms of the hours of labour that will buy them — i.e., each year’s money prices divided by each year’s hourly wage rates — we cannot fail to be struck by the rate of the advance which, considering the spectacular improvement in qualities, seems to have been greater and not smaller than it ever was before.” ( Schumpeter , 2010, p. 72) “The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates…This process of Creative Destruction i s the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in.” ( Schumpeter , 2010, p. 72 - 73) Karl Marx “Marx's theory provided a useful threefold analysis: first, capitalism is based on expl oitation (the source of profit is surplus value); second, the private property of the means of production is the source simultaneously of the injustice and the irrationality of capitalism; third, the falling rate of profit is the source of crises.” (Przewo rski, 1985, p. 206) “By depriving people of access to the means of life except via money and the market, it creates the basis for modern work discipline. Function as an efficient, disciplined laborer, it decrees, or face the dire consequences: unemployment , poverty, and the insecurity, ill health, and hardship these entail. With these threats, capitalist market dependence tends to inculcate in workers the basic habits necessary to regular exploitation: time management (showing up to work regularly and on ti me); obedience (following the dictates of employers, managers, and supervisors); industriousness (working flat out); and financial responsibility (paying one’s bills promptly and in full).” (McNally, 2011, p. 115) “ The capitalist system presupposes the complete separation of the labourers from all property in the means by which they can realize their labour. As soon as capitalist production is once on its own legs, it not only maintains this separation, but reproduce s it on a continually extending scale. The process, therefore, that dears the way for the capitalist system, can be none other than the process which takes away from the labourer the possession of his means of production; a process that transforms, on the one hand, the social means of subsistence and of production into capital, on the other, the immediate producers into wage - labourers. The so - called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. It appears as primitive, because it forms the pre - historic stage of capital and of the mode of production corresponding with it. ( Marx 1977, p. 484) John Maynard Keynes “The combination of democracy and capitalism constitutes a co mpromise: those who do not own instruments of production consent to the institution of the private ownership of capital stock while those who own productive instruments consent to political institutions that permit other groups to effectively press their c laims to the allocation of resources and the distribution of output.” ( Przeworski, 1985, 207) As Keynes himself put it: "It is not the ownership of the instruments of production which it is important for the state to assume. If the state is able to determi ne the aggregate amount of resources devoted to augmenting the instruments and the basic reward to those who own them, it will have accomplished all that is necessary." (1964: 37S) Democratic control over the level of unemployment and the distribution of i ncome became the terms of the compromise that made democratic capitalism possible.” ( Przeworski, 1985, p. 207) Sources Marx, K. (1977). McLellan, D (Ed.) Karl Marx: Selected Readings . Oxford University Press. McNally, D. (2011). Global Slump : The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance . Fernwood Press. Przeworski, A. 1985. Capitalism and Social Democracy . Cambridge University Press. Schumpeter, J.A. (2010). Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1st ed.). London: Routledge

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