4. Wealth, Poverty, and Social Class: Texts
- “Lawful Occupations and Livelihood” from the Dharmasutras of Gautama
This selection comes from one of the earliest known dharmasutras, or treatises of Hindu religious law. It lays the foundation for the caste system that has predominated in India for thousands of years.
- Adam Smith: from Wealth of Nations
This excerpt from the fifth chapter of Smith’s classic 1776 treatise on economics gives the basic argument of capitalism: that generating wealth in a capitalist economy requires one to command others’ labor. This point forms the basis of the Marxist critique in The Communist Manifesto and elsewhere.
- Thorstein Veblen: from The Theory of the Leisure Class
This brief excerpt comes from the famous 1899 book that coined the phrase “conspicuous consumption.” This reading contrasts directly with the “conspicuous destruction” described in Octavio Paz’s essay “Day of the Dead.”
- Margaret Sanger: “The Case for Birth Control”
This 1924 essay from the feminist writer and birth control advocate combines nicely with the book’s two readings about overpopulation: Malthus’s “Essay on the Principle of Population” and Hardin’s “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor.”
- Norman Rockwell: Freedom from Want
This famous depiction of an extended family enjoying an opulent meal is one of Rockwell’s Four Freedoms paintings. Rockwell’s painting, Freedom of Speech, is on page 583 of the text.
