This course will consider the history of political economy as a history of economic and political discourses from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, paying particular attention to intersections with the history of legal thought. The focus will be on three themes: first, the transformation of the ancient theoretical vocabulary of polis and oikos into the modern vocabulary of civil society (or economy) and state; second, the emergence of the concept of the self-equilibrating economy in the eighteenth century, and subsequent controversies over its normative underpinnings; third, the rise and fall of classical political economy and its relation to its successor schools, nineteenth-century marginalism and twenty-century welfare economics. Readings will consist mainly of primary works by central figures in this historical tradition.
This course will follow Law's Academic Calendar meeting Mondays January 9th-April 24th (14 weeks). Please contact david.grewal@berkeley.edu if interested in this course.