From Challenging the Text to Constructing It in a Large Economics Classroom: Revealing the Not-So-Common Sense of the Capitalist Mode of Production

Abstract

This paper recounts a large class teaching process designed to encourage student critique, debate, and engagement. It focuses on an example of one in-class, small group exercise of negotiating ownership claims on a capital good and its output. The communal outcomes that students themselves negotiate contradict their prior taken-for-granted belief in the “rightness” of the capitalist mode of production and offer the class an opportunity to reflect on principles of fairness in resource distribution. JEL Classification: A13, A22, B51