Capitalism, Socialism, and Localism, Completed

I finally got my syllabus for this monster course all pulled together. (And I only missed having it ready for the students for the first session of class by a day!) I can't think of when I last taught a class where I considered--and rejected--as many different possible reading assignments. My thanks to all who helped me out before. Here's a brief rundown of what I ended giving my students to read (arranged alphabetically, rather than in the schedule I'll be lecturing on them):

Wendell Berry, various essays from Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community and The Art of the Commonplace

G.A. Cohen, Why Not Socialism?

Herman E. Daly and John C. Cobb, selections from For the Common Good

F.A. Hayek, selections from The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism

Robert L. Heilbroner, selections from The Worldly Philosophers

John Maynard Keynes, "The End of Laissez-Faire"

Karl Marx, "On the Jewish Question," selections from Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and The German Ideology, and The Communist Manifesto

Deidre McCloskey, selections from The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

Karl Polanyi, selections from The Great Transformation

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, First Discourse, Second Discourse, and Discourse on Political Economy

E.F. Schumacher, selections from Small is Beautiful

Richard Sennett, selections from The Culture of the New Capitalism

Adam Smith, selections from Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations

Herbert Spencer, "The New Toryism"

Michael Walzer, "A Day in the Life of a Socialist Citizen" and selections from Spheres of Justice

It's almost certainly going to be way too much for them to read...but in the end, I was cutting stuff out, rather than trying to fill out the semester. As I said before, a difficult class to shape, figuring out what to include and what not. Hopefully someday I'll have the opportunity to teach on this topic again; by then, I'll have some experience to fall back on.