trade unionism and social justice - lecture two: introduction to political economy
TRANSCRIPT
Economics is a social subject.
It’s the interactions and relationships between people
that make the economy go around.
Debates over economic issues are not technical
debates where expertise alone settles the day. They
are deeply political debates.
Economics is a social subject.
It’s the interactions and relationships between people
that make the economy go around.
Debates over economic issues are not technical
debates where expertise alone settles the day. They
are deeply political debates.
A society in which ordinary people know more
about economics, and recognize the often conflicting
interests at stake in the economy, is a society in
which more people will feel confident deciding for
themselves what’s best – instead of trusting the
experts. It will be a more democratic society.
Economics is a social subject.
It’s the interactions and relationships between people
that make the economy go around.
Debates over economic issues are not technical
debates where expertise alone settles the day. They
are deeply political debates.
A society in which ordinary people know more
about economics, and recognize the often conflicting
interests at stake in the economy, is a society in
which more people will feel confident deciding for
themselves what’s best – instead of trusting the
experts. It will be a more democratic society.
Quite apart from whether you think capitalism is
good or bad, capitalism is something we must study.
It’s the economy we live in, the economy we know.
The purpose of capitalism is self-expansion – capital begets capital – and it
does so by monetizing social value and human labour. This is a circuit of
transformation.
Immanuel Wallerstein, Historical Capitalism (London: Verso, 2011), 15.