Essay question for this unit is: Which is a more important goal for a society: economic equality or economic growth?
Biography - Karl Marx
Karl Marx was born in Prussia in 1818, one of nine children. His father was a successful lawyer, who introduced Marx to philosophy and wanted Marx to become a lawyer. At the University of Berlin, Marx studied law and philosophy and became involved in radical student groups. He received his doctorate from the in 1841, but his radical politics prevented him from procuring a teaching position. At this point began to work as a journalist, but the government shut down the newspaper he was writing for because of its radical politics.
In 1843, Marx went to live in Paris, which was the center of radical revolutionary politics in Europe. While he was there, he befriended Friedrich Engels. Engels came from a wealthy German family yet supported radical politics and used his money to support Marx for the rest of Marx’s life. After a year in Paris, Marx was expelled from France for his writings and he moved to Belgium. In Belgium, Marx first learned about the idea of communism and began to organize communists across Europe into a single group. A group of communists in England invited Marx and Engels to join a meeting of the Communist League and write a document that described the goals of communism. In 1848, Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto. Because of the revolutionary statements in The Communist Manifesto, Marx was prohibited from living in most of Europe. He lived the rest of his life in England.
Marx spent his time in England working on researching and writing the book Capital. The book combined deep historical research and economic theory and described Marx’s communist ideas in detail. He published the first volume of Capital in 1867. The other two volumes of Capital were published after his death by Engels. In addition, in 1864, Marx was a leader in the First International, a meeting of radical revolutionaries from around the world which had the goal of uniting revolutionaries in a common effort to overthrow capitalism.
Biography - John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was born in England in 1806 to a prosperous family. His father had a high position in the British East India Company and he educated Mill in the philosophy – by age 12, Mill had read all of the major philosophers, including Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Adam Smith. As a teenager, Mill became a supporter of the idea of Utilitarianism, that is based on the idea that society should be run in order to create “the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.” This thought was at the core of many of Mill’s later ideas. His father secured Mill a position working for the British East India Company and Mill would spend his whole life working in a high position in the company. In his early twenties, Mill suffered a severe case of depression that had been caused by the stress of his education. After the depression passed, Mill found that the experience moved him to become more critical of utilitarianism and develop his own thoughts.
In 1848, Mill the book Principles of Political Economy, which was the leading economics textbook for the next 40 years. In the book, Mill defended the ideas of capitalism developed by Adam Smith because it made society wealthier. However, Mill recognized that there were problems with capitalism and he argued that there was a role for the government in regulating the economy to make society better off. For example, he thought that worker’s hours should be limited and that the government should tax the wealthy and use the money to help the poor. Mill also believed that the government should support the education of everyone because that would improve the happiness of society.
Mill followed up his work in economics in 1859 with his book On Liberty, in which he described how government should work. Mill held to the idea personal freedom was the most important thing because free people will make choices that will make them happy, which means society would be happier, and that free people work to have the most fulfilling life. However, Mill also saw that there was the danger that free people might hurt each other. To deal with this problem, Mill developed the “harm principle” which said that the government could limit personal freedom “is to prevent harm to others." Mill believed that democracy was the best system of government and that everyone should have the right to vote, although more educated people should get more votes.
Mill was also a strong advocate for women’s education and right to vote. His wife, Harriet Taylor had strong influence on Mill’s thinking. She was well educated and Mill thought of her as his intellectual equal. In 1861, he wrote the book The Subjection of Women, which argued that women should have the right to vote. In 1865, Mill was elected to the British Parliament where he spent his time trying to win women political equality to men and being critical of the British government’s policy toward its colonies. After he left office in 1865, he spent the last remaining years of his life on fighting for women’s rights.
Source # 4 - Chart showing the relationship between worker output or worker productivity and wages. The "nil" means there is no information about wages during that time period.
