The theme of these two lectures is that when production takes place under a system of division of labor and capitalism, the material self-interests of all rational human beings are harmonious. The theme is developed in application to three leading features of capitalism: private ownership of the means of production, economic inequality, and economic competition.

(The material on which the lectures are based is drawn from the eight lectures Dr. Reisman delivered at the first TJS conference in 1983 on the institutions and functioning of capitalism. That material will be made available to all conference participants in written form, well in advance of the conference, as two chapters of Dr. Reisman's forthcoming book Capitalism.)