On the Origins of Capitalism
Taught by Quinn
Quinn hails from the wet coasts of the Pacific Northwest, and is currently living happily in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.
We all know Ben Franklin's famous exhortation: "A penny saved is a penny earned." Indeed, his words have become sacred writ in our society. As big banks ceaselessly make profits for the sake of profits, the rest of us live according to capitalist precepts like Ben's, whether we want to or not. Our lives are determined by capital, right down to the alarm clocks by our beds and the clothes on our backs.
How did we wind up in this mess? To discover the roots of the very unpleasant system in which we live, we'll examine the pervasive atmosphere of intellectual and cultural shift that began roughly toward the end the 15th century, and how this shift acted as a sort of incubator of capital.
The cultural sea change was widespread and deep: the printing press enabled the dissemination of information from the top 1% of the population down to other classes; the discovery of the new world broke the assumptions Europeans had about the Bible and history; the Protestant Reformation undid the universality of the Church and began 150 years of war over what it meant to be Christian; and discoveries by Copernicus, Newton, Bacon and Locke fundamentally changed the way we perceive and study the world.
These developments, along with many other social and economic forces, are responsible for the conditions that enabled capitalism to flourish. We'll take a look at some of these phenomena, along with a few key moments in 20th century capitalism: Henry Ford and mass production, the establishment of the IMF, the end of state socialism, and so forth. Finally, we'll discuss what a world after capitalism would look like--and whether it's possible to realize that world.
