adam smith and capitalist hypocrisy

[peaccenicked]

"Our merchants and master manufacturers complain of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and thereby lessening the sale of their goods at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people" [The Wealth of Nations, p. 98]

[Guest]

Augusto sandino says:

True.

Ofcourse you take the quote out of context, he is referring to merchants in guilds and monopolistic industrialists.

[ID2002]

Capitalism creates those who are "self-centred" and motivated only by $. That sort of attitude SUCKS!
I agree with you 100% {peacenicked} ....socialism is a MUCH STRONGER system and is more sustainable. I lived in Socialist countries before... Iceland, and Cuba....and I am Canadian.

[peaccenicked]

It would be strange if Smith thought differently about any other set of capitalists. He is making a general
moral point.

[Guest]

you betray so much misunderstanding in your replies.

That's right smith did not think differently about "any other set of capitalists" that's because in smith's vision everyone was a capitalists, and that is the reality. Everyone is afforded the liberty to own capital, from their internal faculties to their external material possessions. What I'm trying to say is that smith was saying that everyone succumbs to the desire to maximize their own interests. It has nothing to do with human nature or anything, its just that people like having things. Capitalist or not, in smith's definition the term capitalist, oddly enough, is never used. Try reading things without the lenses of prejudice with which you posted this.

[peaccenicked]

From a review of Adam Smith.
"Smith’s best regime, unlike Aristotle’s, is a commercial society. Smith argues that the economy should be organized on market principles, allowing a great deal of scope for competition. When left to itself the market produces great unintended benefits. Hence, it is the "invisible hand," rather than government action, that produces the remarkably good distribution of subsistence seen in societies that allows nature to work.

In the best regime the many ordinary citizens are perfected to a considerable degree and a few can reach the peak of humanity. Everyone must be benevolent in the best regime: it is a society of gentlemen. Another type of human peak, the philosopher, is also a direct product of the commercial society’s division of labour. The best regime will produce many peaks of human perfection.

Further, in perfecting themselves, citizens are made happy. The gentleman, being beloved for his benevolent actions, is happy. The ordinary citizens, through perfecting their craft, and earning a comfortable living, are happy. The many preconditions for happiness (freedom, property, security, and justice) are all met in the best regime.

Finally, we can note that the best regime provides for all the other ends of nature. It is a society with extensive economic, political, and religious freedom. It provides perfect external and internal security which are required for order. It provides comfortable preservation and with it the means for considerable procreation. The best regime, by providing all of the ends of nature, really does provide human flourishing.

Only the free trade commercial society, one based on the "system of natural liberty," begins to answer the economic and political problems that have beset humanity. Smith seems to have viewed England, modified by Dutch trade policy, as the best practicable. While no actual regime will reach the standard of the best regime, the latter does represent a benchmark by which all commercial societies are judged, and all are found wanting."
If you want us to believe that Britain even wih the Dutch modification,in Smiths time represented the 'best regime'. I think there is very much
something found wanting in your thinking and that your vision is even more utopian than the early socialists.
Capitalism has proven itself to be intrinsically immoral
and only those blind to its history would argue anything else.