Capitalism and Its Critics
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this economics course examining how the modern capitalist economy evolved and how it performs today. The syllabus contrasts competing paradigms, neoclassical, Marxist, socioeconomic, and neocorporate, to explain how each frames markets, labor, and the state differently. Readings draw on classic texts in economic thought alongside contemporary analyses, and the course emphasizes general analytic reasoning and problem formulation over narrow technical methods. Materials include the full reading list, assignments, and lecture notes as published by MIT, free to access with no certificate attached. It suits anyone wanting a structured, historically grounded introduction to the major schools of economic thought and their disagreements about how capitalism actually works.