I am—again—taking over Barry Eichengreen’s large undergraduate course this spring, while he is on sabbatical…

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I now, however, have my book, Slouching Towards Utopia: The Economic History of the 20th Century, out and in print: <bit.ly/3pP3Krk>. The students will read and think about the book—they will, after all, be highly, highly incentivized to do so. And if I am not going to bore people to tears during lecture, I am going to have to throw my lecture notes away: there are too many similarities to the book. And I am going to have to think of new things to say, during lecture, commenting on and placing the book, as well as all the other readings, in perspective.

I have decided to lean very heavily into Scottish Enlightenment-style “stage theory”: the belief that there is a technological and economic base—a “mode of production” (but also important are modes of distribution, communication, and domination)—that the rest of society has to fit. Different technologies (of production, communication, domination, and hence distribution) lead to different sets of social relations, property rights, and political systems, for the latter must “fit” with the former, or else.

Hence as I proceed through this course on the 20th century—and I am going to cheat: I am not going to start in 1914 or 1900 or 1870, but rather in -4000, and I will not even reach 1870 in any serious way until class 5 on January 30—I am going to have to try to juggle:

• Modes of communication: language, writing, printing, mass media, social media, algorithmic feeds…

• Modes of distribution & control: dominance, prestige, reciprocal gift-exchange, redistribution, propaganda, charisma, honor, market economy (which is something much more than reciprocity), bureaucracy (which is something much more than redistribution), algorithmic classification…

• Modes of production: asiatic, ancient, bureaucratic, feudal, gunpowder empire, commercial, steampower, applied-science, mass-production, global value-chain, attention info-biotech…

Plus, I want to give do regard and attention to the ideas and influence of Karl Polanyi, Friedrich von Hayek, John Maynard Keynes, Joseph Schumpeter, and probably others—Norman Angell, W.E.B DuBois, William Beveridge, Simone de Beauvoir, Ernest Gellner, Peter Drucker, Frank Fukuyama, and Claudia Goldin come most readily to my mind right now…

Wish me luck!

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Course Schedule & Readings

The World Economy in the 20^th Century

Economics 115 :: Spring 2024 :: U.C. Berkeley

SUBJECT TO CHANGE!

I. Introduction:

• 2024-01-16 Tu: The Long 20^th Century: A Grand Narrative
  DeLong, Slouching, Intro; Block: “Introduction” to The Great Transformation; David: “Clio & the Economics of QWERTY”

II. Pre-Modern Economic Growth Societies:

• 2024-01-18 Th: Agrarian-Age Society: -4000 to 1500
  Crone: Pre-Industrial Societies, pp. 1-57

• 2024-01-23 Tu: Imperial-Commercial, Gunpowder-Empire, and Towards Steampower Societies: 1500 to 1920
  Wyman: The Verge, Intro., ch. 3, & Conc.; Engels: Socialism, Utopian & Scientific, pp. 37-85

III. Modern Economic Growth:

• 2024-01-25 Th: Escaping from the Shadow of Malthus: Demographic Transition 1700 to 2024
  Livi-Bacci: A Concise History of World Population, chs. 3-4, pp. 85-156

• 2024-01-30 Tu: Globalizing the World: 1870 to 1914
  DL: ch. 1. Optional: Eichengreen: Globalizing Capital, ch. 2

• 2024-02-01 Th: Revving-Up the Engine of Technology-Driven Growth: 1870 to 1914
  DL: 2; Vries: “The California School and Beyond”; Kuznets: Modern Economic Growth

• 2024-02-06 Tu: Democracy & Empire: 1870 to 1950
  DL: 3 & 4; Nunn: “Long-Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades”; Acemoglu & al.: “Colonial Origins of Comparative Development”

IV. Applied-Science Society:

• 2024-02-08 Th: World War I & Roaring Twenties: 1900 to 1930
  DL: 5 & 6; Optional: Eichengreen: Globalizing Capital, ch. 3

• 2024-02-13 Tu: Great Depression: 1925 to 1945
  DL: 7; Eichengreen: “Origins & Nature of the Great Slump Revisited”. Optional: Orwell: The Road to Wigan Pier, chs. 1-3;

• 2024-02-15 Th: Really-Existing Socialism: 1848 to 1991
  DL: 8; Allen: “Rise & Decline of the Soviet Economy”. Optional: Gaidar: “Grain & Oil”

• 2024-02-20 Tu: Fascism, Naziism, & WWII: 1900 to 1945

  DL: 9 & 10; Tooze: The Wages of Destruction, pp. xix-xxvii, 1-13, 429-460, 656-676. Optional: Herf: Reactionary Modernism, pp. 215-35;

2024-02-22 Th: Midterm

V. Mass-Production Society:

• 2024-02-27 Tu: The Cold War, & False (& True) Starts to Economic Development: 1870 to 2000
  DL: 11 & 12; Bates: When Things Fell Apart, pp. 97-138; Lewis: Evolution of the International Economic Order, 1-25, 31-7, 67-77. Optional: Iyer: “Direct versus Indirect Colonial Rule: Long-Term Consequences”; 

• 2024-02-29 Th: Inclusion: 1500 to 2024
  DL: 13; Wilson: ‘The Declining Significance of Race’: Revisited & Revised”. Optional: Piketty & Saez: “Inequality in the Long Run”; Goldin & al.: “The Homecoming of American College Women”;

• 2024-03-05 Tu: The New Deal Order: 1930 to 1980
  DL: 14; Kennedy: “What the New Deal Did”. Optional: Crafts: “The Golden Age of European Economic Growth”; 

• 2024-03-07 Th: The Thirty Glorious Years: 1945-1975
  Eichengreen: Globalizing Capital, chs. 4-5. Optional: Lim: “Rise & Fall of the Korean Model of Economic Development”

VI. Global Value-Chain Society:

• 2024-03-12 Tu: The Neoliberal Order: 1980 to 2024
  DL: 15. Optional: Taylor: “The Global 1970s and the Echo of the Great Depression”; Babb: “The Washington Consensus as Transnational Policy Paradigm”

• 2024-03-14 Th: Reglobalization, Infotech, & Hyperglobalization: 1965 to 2007
  DL: 16

• 2024-03-19 Tu: China & Russia
  Brandt & Ralski: China’s Great Boom as a Historical Process. Optional: Djankov & Hauc: “Divergent Postcommunist Paths to Democracy & Economic Freedom”

• 2024-03-21 Th: Great Recession & the Ænemic Recovery

  DL: 17. Optional: Eichengreen: Globalizing Capital, chs. 6-7

• 2024-04-02 Tu: Neoliberalism in Crisis
  Gordon: “Secular Stagnation”

• 2024-04-04 Th: “Populism” & Plague 

  Eichengreen: The Populist Temptation, chs.  7-11.

• 2024-04-09 Tu: Global Convergence: 1990-

  Patel & al.: “The New Era of Unconditional Convergence.”

• 2024-04-11 Th: Global Warming: 1975-
  Auffhammer: “Quantifying Economic Damages from Climate Change”

VII. Attention Info-Biotech Society:

• 2024-04-16 Tu: The Latest “Mode of Production”

  Brynjolfsson & al.: “Artificial Intelligence & the Modern Productivity Paradox”

• 2024-04-18 Th: The Future…

  Sandberg, Anders, & al.: “Dissolving the Fermi Paradox”

VIII. Conclusion:

• 2024-04-23 Tu: Looking Backward

  DL: Conc.; Bellamy: Looking Backward 2000-1887

• 2024-04-25 Th: Lecture Q&A Review

  Optional: Allen, GEH

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