Understanding Capitalism: Competition, Command and Change

Third edition
By Samuel Bowles, Richard Edwards and Frank Roosevelt
Discussion/Study Short Essay questions:

Chapter 1: Capitalism Shakes the World

1. Why do you think that capitalism has been such a revolutionary
system? Can you describe where it led to growth and how uneven
it has been? If you can, explain why it has been so uneven, and
often unequal, between countries and regions.
2. Consider any large city that you know or like. How large is its
population? Is it one of the 400+ cities in the world with over a
million people? At what point in history did it come to grow to be
so large? If it is in the past 50-100 years, do you have any idea
why this might have been the case? What kind of industries led to
this level of urbanization?
3. Describe the ways in which capitalism brought about rapid and
dramatic change. In particular, give at least three examples of its
effect on work and production.
4. In what ways do you consider capitalism to be an advance over
earlier ways of organizing the economy?
5. Consider any technology that you are interested in. In recent
decades, how has this technology changed the way people do
things?
6. What do you think about economic globalization? What features
of it do you think are good? Which features might you consider
bad?

Chapter 2: People, Preferences and Society

1. A field of biology called sociobiology predicts that altruistic
behavior decreases as people become less genetically related. The
geneticist J.B.S. Haldane once put it this way: Id gladly give my
life for three of my brothers, five of my nephews, nine of my
cousins How much of human behavior do you think can be
described by this?
2. A very famous economist once remarked, Men (people) make
their own history, but not under circumstances of their own
choosing. Relate this statement to the model of human behavior
written about in the section on preferences, beliefs and
constraints.
3. Explain the ultimatum game and the ways in which this throws
light on human behavior.
4. In an old Indian folktale, a village committee decides that on the
occasion of a feast, everyone should contribute a cup of milk to
the dessert and pour it into the cooking pot the night before, so
that it can boil through the night. One person decides to pour a
cup of water instead since this is cheaper and he thinks no one will
know the difference. The next morning, when the cooks go and
open the lid to the pot, they find that the entire pot is filled with
water!
a. What kind of game does this story describe?
b. What kind of behavior of individuals does this suppose? Is
this realistic?
c. If you were on the village committee, what would you think
of doing to make sure that people contributed milk rather
than water
5. Robert Cialdini, a professor of psychology, notes that when the
Disabled American Veterans mails out requests for contributions, their
success rate is only about 18 percent. However, when their mailing
includes personalized address labels, the success rates almost doubles to
35 percent. What principle of human behavior is on display here?

Chapter 3: A Three-Dimensional Approach to Economics

1. The text says that political economy is three-dimensional. What
are the three dimensions? How is this different from conventional
economics?
2. What are the criteria, or values, in political economy that we use
to judge the merits of an economic system? Explain the meaning
of each, and for each criterion give an example of an economic
system that does not meet the criterion
3. Distinguish between Pareto optimality and efficiency.
4. What are the three central assumptions of neoclassical
economics?
5. What is meant by a contract? What does it mean for a contract to
be complete or incomplete?

Chapter 4: Political Economy Past and Present

1. What does it mean for the economy to be embedded?
2. What do you understand the term creative destruction to
mean?
3. What is meant by transactions costs? Why, according to Coase,
does this concept help us to understand the existence of firms?
4. According to a prominent neoclassical economist, the puzzle
about the Great Depression was why so many people chose to
remain unemployed. Why, according to Keynes, was this a
misdiagnosis of the Great Depression? What did Keynes think
might be the solution?
5. Give a case in which you think the invisible hand works and one
in which it doesnt work. That is, give an example in the modern
economy where you think there should be government
intervention and one in which there shouldnt be, explaining why
in each case, the invisible hand works or doesnt
6. Imagine that Smith, Marx, and Keynes were alive today and sat
down to dinner with you and began arguing about whether the
government should intervene in the economy. What would each
of them say? When you finally get a chance to get a word in
edgewise, what viewpoint would you put forward?
7. Look at the figure on page 405. Of the economists discussed in
this chapter, who is most closely associated with the picture?
What would he call the spread out ups and downs noted in the
figure?
8. In mid-2000, Kodak announced that is was eliminating 10,000
jobs as it struggled to cope with the move toward digital
photography. What would Schumpeter have to say about this?
What might Marx say?

Chapter 5: The Surplus Product: Conflict and Change

1. The text says that the economy may be thought of as a collection

of labor processes. What are the two basic types of labor
processes? How are they connected in the capitalist economy?
How are they coordinated?
2. Suppose the direct producers in the simple economic model of
question 1 fought for and got a larger share of the grain they
produced. How might those who get the surplus product respond
to protect their share? What kind of conflicts might result? How
could everyone get more?
3. What are some ways in which the size of the surplus product
could be increased in the simple grain economy within foreign
trade? Explain carefully how, after introduction of foreign trade,
there is an additional way in which the surplus product could be
enlarged.
4. Explain the conflicts of interest that may occur over (a) the
consumption level of producers and (b) the real price of imported
inputs.

Chapter 6: Capitalism as an Economic System

1. Discuss some differences between the outputs of labor processes in

the home and the outputs of the labor process in a capitalist firm.
2. Define economic system, and describe feudalism, slavery, and
capitalism as economic systems. What features do they have in
common? How do they differ?
3. Define lass and surplus, and explain the relationship between
them. Give at least two examples of this relationship from two
different economic systems.
4. The production and distribution of goods and services in the U.S.
have not always been organized along capitalist lines, nor are all
of them even today. Define capitalism and indicate the major
noncapitalist systems of production and distribution both today
and two centuries ago. Describe briefly how they worked.
5. If it were not necessary for the dominant class to devote resources
to controlling the producer class, how would society be different?
(no more guard labor). What occupations would no longer exist
or would be greatly reduced in numbers?
6. The text says that class is not defined by income but by
relationship to the production of the surplus. Does this mean that
there is no relationship between class and the size of peoples
incomes?
7. Each class has an interest in getting and keeping an income that is
both secure and as large as possible. What steps might the direct
producers take to increase their income security?
8. What steps might the dominant class (the receivers of the surplus)
take to try to make their incomes more secure?
9. What do you understand the private ownership of capital goods to
mean? What do property rights have to do with defining an
economic system?

10. Indira Gandhi, the late Indian prime minister once said: The
idea of a better world is one in which medical discoveries will be
free of patents and there will be no profiteering from life and
death. Patents are property rights over intellectual discoveries.
What do you think of Gandhis statement?

Chapter 7: American Capitalism: Accumulation and Change

1. Briefly outline the various social structures of accumulation, or

phases, of U.S. economic history. What were the time periods of
each SSA? What were the dominant characteristics of the
relations between capitalists? Between capitalists and workers?
Between the government and the economy?
2. What is the middle class? Describe its two major parts and
contrast their economic activities
3. Define accumulation. Explain why accumulation might occur at a
rapid rate under circumstances or in some historical perids and at
a slow rate during other periods of history.
4. Carefully define the capitalist class and the working class.
Describe the development of the working lass in the U.S. during
the later 18th and 19th centuries?
5. In what ways is American capitalism global today?

Chapter 8: Supply and Demand: How Markets Work

1. Define marginal cost. Why in a competitive market will there be

a pressure of price to equal marginal cost (and not be above or
below it)?
2. Answer the following using a supply and demand diagram: (a)
What factors cause the demand curve to shift and in which way?
(b) What factors cause the supply curve to shift and in which
way?
3. Can a demand curve ever slope upward?

Chapter 9: Competition and Coordination: The Invisible

Hand
1. The Socialism Debate: Several famous economistsLudwig von
Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Maurice Dobb, Jabob Marschak, and
Oskar Langewere involved in a very intense debate in the 1930s
called the Socialism Debate. The first two contended that the
market was the best coordinator of production, whereas the latter
three felt that a central planner could do the job best. In other
words, the battle was over whether an economy organized by
competition between many individuals was better than one in
which a central authority commanded production. Although the
socialists carried the day at that time, the ideas of Hayek, in
particular, won out over the long term. Hayek argued in a series
of articles from the late 1930s to the 1960s that a state-run
economy was less efficient in resource allocation than a market
run economy, because the information conveyed by the price
mechanism of a market economy was greater than that available
to a central planner. Elaborate on Hayeks insight by explaining
how prices are a mechanism for conveying decentralized
information and motivation for market participatants.
2. Imagine that you can download music without legal consequences.
What is the approximate marginal cost to you of making a CD of
your favorite songs by your favorite artist? What would the
approximate cost of buying that CD in a store? Is the price equal
to the marginal cost here? Where does this market failure come
from? Does the advent of services like iTunes where you can
download a single song for a dollar solve this problem
3. Define and explain the concept of an externality
4. How, according to Adam Smith, might order and coherence be the
result of the uncoordinated actions of self-seeking individuals?
5. What is a coordination problem? What is a coordination failure?
Use the prisoners dilemma to explain your answers.

6. Using a 2 X 2 grid like the prisoners dilemma, explain why the

strategic interaction between two companies that can charge
either a high price or a low price may result in lower profits for
both if they are acting competitively. Explain, again using the
grid, why there may be a tendency for firms to try to collude.
Finally, explain why it may be hard for firms to remain in
equilibrium in which they both colludei.e., What is the incentive
for each player in the collusion equilibrium?

Chapter 10: Capitalist Production and Profits

1. Is it possible for a firms profit rate to rise while its total profits
fall? Is it possible for a firms profit rate to fall while its total
profits rise? What changes in the determinants of the profit rate
could lead to these results?
2. Consider the determinants of the rate of profit. There are a
variety of strategies capitalists might employ to raise the rate of
profit. Does using these strategies to increase r necessarily hurt
workers? If not, which do and which dont
3. Distinguish between capitalist and commercial profits.
4. Write out the complete equation for the profit rate you have
learned, defining all the terms you use.
5. Describe four strategies to increase the numerator in the equation
for the profit rate.
6. Sometimes, when there is news that wages are on the rise, the
stock market falls. Why?

Chapter 11: Competition and Concentration

1. The text says that the economist Joseph Schumpteter understood
breakthrough as creating temporary monopolies. What is meant
by this?
2. Here are some interesting quotes by the great economists
encountered in the previous chapters:
The outstanding fact is the extreme precariousness of the basis of knowledge on
which our estimates of prospective yield have to be made. Our knowledge of the
factors which govern the yield of an investment some years hence is usually very
slight and negligible. If we speak frankly, we have to admit that our basis of
knowledge for estimating the yield ten years hence of a railway, a copper mine, a
textile factory, the goodwill of a patent medicine, an Atlantic liner, a building in the
City of London amounts to little and sometimes to nothing; or even five years
hence
--John Maynard Keynes

Explain Keyness comment in light of the discussion of expected

profits on page 271.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and
diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some
contrivance to raise prices.
--Adam Smith

What tendency within capitalism is Smith referring to here? Explain

why it may come about
Competition acts, as is always the case when the general rate of profit is settled,
as a practical freemasonry [or brotherhood] of the capitalist class, so that they
each share in the common booty in proportion.
--Karl Marx

but in different circumstances:

[competition] now becomes a question of strength and cunning, and
competition now becomes a struggle of enemy brothers.
--Karl Marx

What tendencies within capitalism is Marx referring to here? Explain

in the context of this chapter how this may come about.
3. Think of some new products or techniques of production that
have been developed over the last few years. What old products
did the new products displace? Which companies are leading the
development of new technology?
4. Why would the functioning of capitalism tend to result in the
equalization of profit rates? What offsetting tendencies are
there? Which tendencies will prevail?
5. What are the three major forms of capitalist competition?
Discuss each, making specific reference to their impacts on the
determinants of the profit rate.
6. In what ways do larger firms have an advantage over small firms
in their ability to make profits?

Chapter 12: Wages and Work

1. Is work necessarily unpleasant? Do humans have an innate
(natural) tendency to avoid work? What has been your
experience with enjoying or hating work? Describe a pleasant
work experience (paid or not). What was pleasant about it? Are
bad workingwork that is routine or meaninglesssimply the
result of modern industrial technology? What sort of working
conditions could you envision that would lead people to enjoy
producing?
2. Define labor cost in words. Then, using the formula for labor
cost, discuss the potential conflicts between capitalists and
workers.
3. Discuss the idea that the fundamental problem of capitalist
production is the extraction of work from workers. Use the terms
incomplete contract and labor extraction.
4. Unlike other markets, the labor market tends not to clear; the
result is excess supply, or involuntary unemployment. Explain
the logic of this statement using the labor extraction model.
5. In the mid-1990s the U.S. passed what was called welfare reform,
which involved the cutting of unemployment benefits. Using
graphs and the labor extraction model, can you tell whether
workers would support this policy? What about employers?
6. According to Ronald Coase, firms are mini-command economies.
Using the idea of incomplete contracts and transactions costs,
explain why.

Chapter 13: Technology, Control, and Conflict in the

Workplace
1. The text describes three systems of control of the labor process
Name them and discuss each, paying special attention to how each can
bring down unit labor costs. How do employers decide what kind of
technical change to introduce? Are all technical changes that employers
introduce necessarily more efficient? Why or why not? Include in your
answer a discussion of the relevant determinants of the profit rate.
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of worker-owned,
democratically run firms? Why are there not more of them in
employer economies?
3. Some argue that market competition tends to erode racial and sexual
discrimination while others argue that capitalism tends to perpetuate
racial and sexual discrimination. What is the logic of these two
arguments? What is your assessment of these arguments?
4. The text presents a relatively positive image of unions, indicating that
they are often formed by workers seeking to collectively defend their
interests against those of an employer. At the same time, many people in
our society argue strongly against unions, claiming that they are
responsible for inflation and low productivity and are bureaucratic and
unresponsive to their membership. What is your image of, and
experience with unions? Do you think their effects on society are
generally positive or generally negative? In what ways?
5. The text argues that workers react defensively to new technologies.
Why defensively? What is it about new technologies that lead workers
to fear their introduction? Why are workers generally on the defensive
rather than on the offensive?
6. In a 2004 report, two researchers who studied U.S. outsourcing wrote:
There has been a major increase in production shifts out of the U.S. in
the last years particularly to Mexico, China, India, and other Asian
countries. There were 69 announced or confirmed production shifts to

Mexico, followed by 58 shifts to China, 31 to India, 39 to other Asian

countries, 35 to other Latin American and Caribbean countries, 23
shifts to other countries including Eastern and Western Europe and
Canada. This compares to 2001, where during the same three month
time period we found only 25 shifts to China, 30 to Mexico and 1 to
India. Why do you think firms are following this strategy? What is
this strategy called? What do you think this is doing to workers in these
firms? What about owners of he firm?
7. Consider any cooperative firms that you know. Write an essay on
why the firm came into being. What are its advantages? What are its
disadvantages?
8. In what ways do markets and hierarchies support each other?
9. Think of some of the jobs you have held or know of. In what ways
has work been socially organized.