Next Reading Group Meeting (10/26)
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009A final meeting before the conference. We decided that we might meet and consider what we’ve read thus far and to facilitate this review I’ve assembled a number of short extracts. Two members suggested we begin at the beginning with Aristotle’s description of the oikos. I’ve added a doggerel fable by Bernard Mandeville that describes a hive of political animals and is considered one of the earliest defenses of “modern” market economics (so claims Friedrich Hayek). Also on offer: a short chapter from Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, Marx’s description of the general formula for capital, and an extract from Ayn Rand on the “meaning of money.”
The whole should be no more than 40 pages of reading. Feel free to pick and choose, but let’s all try to read Aristotle, Marx, and Rand.
Links to the Reading:
- Aristotle Politics, Book I
- Mandeville’s “Grumbling Hive” from The Fable of the Bees
- Smith on “The origin of ambition and of the distinction of Ranks” (TMS, Part I, Section III, chapter ii)
- Marx, Capital, Chapter 4
- Rand, “On the Meaning of Money” from Atlas Shrugged