We previously established that the reality of scarcity invalidates Marx's core idea of superabundance, and mortally wounds his theory. Certainly, his historical predictions about worker-led socialist revolutions around the world were off-mark. Today, Professor Shapiro presents more of the shortcomings of the Marxian tradition.

Exploitation is an important technical--not normative--concept in the theory of Karl Marx. Although we are dealing with voluntary Pareto transactions, under capitalism, exploitation occurs whether or not an individual is better off.

Today, Professor Shapiro continues his discussion of Enlightenment theory of Karl Marx, focusing on the foundations of his theory of capitalism. The central question is, how is wealth created under capitalism at the micro level? For Marx, Adam Smith's invisible hand is not entirely benevolent. His labor theory of value stipulates that living human labor-power is the only way to create new value, and therefore capitalists who shift toward capital-intensive production cannot actually create new value.

Marxism is the second Enlightenment tradition upon which the course will focus. Contrary to popular belief, Marx did not hate capitalism but derived from economic analysis that it would self-destruct and lead to socialism. It is also a myth that Marx did not care about freedom; he was only egalitarian in the sense that he wanted everyone to have freedom. Ergo, Professor Shapiro asserts that Marx's dialectical materialism is as committed to the two principles of the Enlightenment--basing politics in science and emphasizing individual rights--as utilitarianism.

Although the harm principle as introduced in the last lecture seems straightforward at first glance, today Professor Shapiro discusses its ambiguities. If it "must be calculated to produce evil to someone else," who will be doing the calculations? Second, what does "calculated" mean? Does committing harm imply mens rea, or should strict liability be observed? The class discusses such issues as prostitution, free trade, same-sex marriage, statutory rape, Good Samaritan laws, marital rape, discrimination, and tort adjudication (specifically the 1950s case on thalidomide).

John Stuart Mill's synthesis rights and utility follows naturally in the vein of neoclassical utilitarianism, and it attempts to compensate for many of the shortcomings of Bentham's classical utilitarianism. In the end, it turns out to be a doctrine that does not look very similar to Bentham's at all. An important component of Mill's doctrine is his harm principle, which states that the only purpose for which one can interfere with the liberty of action of another individual is self-protection.

In this economics-oriented lecture, Professor Shapiro introduces neoclassical utilitarianism as it was formulated by economist Vilfredo Pareto and further described by Francis Edgeworth, examining such concepts as indifference curves, transitivity, the Pareto principle, and the Edgeworth box diagram. It is revealed that the main departure of neoclassical utilitarianism from classical utilitarianism was that it did away with Bentham's troublesome interpersonal comparisons of utility.

Final Exam covers the second half of the course.

The various postulates of quantum mechanics treated in previous lectures are reviewed and summarized. The uncertainty principle is again discussed and a new one between energy and time is introduced. The quantum mechanical behavior of an electron in a hydrogen atom is described. The principles of quantum mechanics are then generalized to describe two or more quantum particles. It is shown that identical particles have to be bosons or fermions, the latter obeying the Pauli exclusion principle, which in turn is key to explaining the periodic table.

The time-dependent Schrödinger Equation is introduced as a powerful analog of Newton's second law of motion that describes quantum dynamics. It is shown how given an initial wave function, one can predict the future behavior using Schrödinger's Equation. The special role of stationary states (states of definite energy) is discussed.