Philip Leatherwood, Lecturer

Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics, and Strategic Planning

7 February, 2001

Lecture and Activities Outline

1. Mercantilism—the use of public policy to encourage exports and discourage imports.
2. Individualism—promoting individual freedoms as the proper responsibility of the state.
• Adam Smith
• Thomas Hobbs
• Martin Luther
• Jeremy Bentham
3. Protestantism—"Doing well at one’s calling is the best way to praise God." Extravagance and needless consumption also condemned.
4. Classical Liberalism—best defined with Adam Smith’s prescription on the proper responsibilities of government.

1. protect citizens from foreign invasion
2. protect citizens from domestic "injustices"
3. maintain public institutions and works that could not provide profit to individual investors

Exercise:

The thesis of Hunt and Sherman is clearly that economic ethics—and political policy--have developed as a response to profit motivated merchants and capitalists. Do you agree with this thesis? What about Soviet economic ethics and policy? Using your familiarity with Soviet history, develop a short thesis on how Soviet ethics and policy came about. Did the Soviet system also derive from the ambitions of a privileged few? Was it a satisfactory replacement of paternalistic ethics?