Economics with a Human Face Course Summary
Session 1 – From Plato to Adam Smith. The structure of civil society in Mediaeval Britain, the ideas that govern us, and some simple economic principles.
Session 2 –Natural Law and Enlightenment thinking. Viscount Stair, William Blackstone, John Locke and Adam Smith (again). Three factors of production, land, labour and capital, and factor incomes.
Session 3 – Notions of private property, private interests and the public good; how wealth arises, how the community contributes, and how it may be distributed. The Invisible Hand, and Land (again).
Session 4 – Rent and wages; David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus. Economics – the dismal science or the science of abundance?
Session 5 – A wealth of new ideas: from the Utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham to the Communism of Marx and Engels.
Session 6 – More influential ideas, from Rousseau to John Stuart Mill. The birth of the industrialised working class, the development of companies and of trade unions. Henry George and the single tax on land values.
Session 7 – Alfred Marshall, the Cambridge economists, and the origins of modern Economic theory. Neoclassical economics and the theory of marginal utility. Households and firms considered as the building blocks of the economy.
Session 8 – The Great Depression and John Maynard Keynes. To “purge the rottenness out of the system” or to reflate? The Theory of the Firm and the two sources of income.
Session 9 – A review of 200 years of economic thinking, leading to Bretton Woods and a “new world order” of global economics and free trade. Milton Friedman and monetarism.
Session 10 – Globalisation and the new consensus; beyond Bretton Woods? Economics with Justice.

Note: This is a summary of the topics covered on the course. The School reserves the right to vary or modify this course from term to term.
The aim of this course is not just to understand the various economic theories, but at each stage to challenge them through questioning: Is this Just? Is this fair to everyone?
Handouts are distributed each week, but the emphasis is on learning by hearing and questioning. The handouts are useful tools in following the course and showing how it develops, and leave students with a full record of the topics and principles covered.