Thoughts on Adam Smith and Wealth of Nations

[Blackbird123]

I have been reading Wealth of Nations and I am a little over half done with it. I intend to read Karl Marx's Das Kapital after I'm done with Wealth of Nations. When reading I have also noticed a hatred and understanding that Adam Smith and Karl Marx shared and that is the influence the bourgeois has upon the state. He criticizes the owners of manufactures and merchants for their disruption of natural foreign commerce by putting either drawbacks, bounties, duties on imported goods, all together prohibitions and false dogma that makes the common man think that what the merchant wants and manufacturer wants is what the common man wants. He criticizes laws that make job changing for people difficult and make relieving one branch of an industry's people shortage or human labour shortage, hard.
What are your thoughts on Adam Smith and wealth of nations?

[Dean]

He's far more rational than the corporate bootlickers who champion his works today would like you to believe. Smith believed in taxes, distrusted colluding elites and saw elite interference in the state as a negative force of capitalism. No so "laizze faire" (sic) after all.

[eric922]

OP, you should check out Theory of Moral Sentiment. Smith considered it his most important work and in it he goes even further in criticizing some of the more negative aspects of capitalism.


Here's a quote from it regarding how the rich and poor are viewed:
"This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages."

People who idolize Smith as some sort of libertarian hero should read his work.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations if a bit interesting to see who he really was and what he basically thought. I can see how people like Chomsky say that he was against the capitalist organisation of production, but that's only true for white people, he doesn't seem to have had a problem with slavery, he was a delusional ultra-reactionary capitalist.

[Ostrinski]

Anyone have any good passages at hand to back up the idea that he wasn't as right wing as is commonly pedaled?

[Teacher]

In the progress of the division of labor, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labor, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations; frequently to one or two. But the -understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too, are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his -understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding- out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him, not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging; and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigor and perseverance, in any other employment than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the laboring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it.

[Caj]

Anyone have any good passages at hand to back up the idea that he wasn't as right wing as is commonly pedaled?

Here are a few from The Wealth of Nations that are fun to quote at right-wingers :


From the conclusion of Chapter XI, Book I:

"[E]mployers constitute the third order, that of those who live by profit. It is the stock that is employed for the sake of profit, which puts into motion the greater part of the useful labour of every society.The plans and projects of the employers of stock regulate and direct all the most important operation of labour, and profit is the end proposed by all those plans and projects. But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity, and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich, and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin. The interests of this third order, therefore, has not the same connexion with the general interest of the society, as that of the other two. Merchants and master manufacturers are, in this order, the two classes of people who commonly employ the largest capitals, and who by their wealth draw to themselves the greatest share of the public consideration. As during their whole lives they are engaged in plans and projects, they have frequently more acuteness of understanding than the greater part of country gentlemen. As their thoughts, however, are commonly exercised rather about the interest of their own particular branch of business than about that of the society, their judgement, even when given with the greatest candour (which it has not been upon every occasion), is much more to be depended upon with regard to the former of those two objects, than with regard to the latter. Their superiority over the country gentleman is, not so much in their knowledge of the public interest, as in their having a better knowledge of their own interest than he has of his. It is by his superior knowledge of their own interest that they have frequently imposed upon his generosity, and persuaded him to give up both his own interest and that of the public, from a very simple but honest conviction, that their interest, and not his, was the interest of the public. The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be again it, and can only serve to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public, and who according have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."

From Chapter IV, Book III:

"All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind."

From Chapter III, Book IV:

"Commerce, which ought naturally to be, among nations as among individuals, a bond of union and friendship, has become the most fertile source of discord and animosity. The capricious ambition of kings and ministers has not, during the present and the preceding century, been more fatal to the repose of Europe, than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers. The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy: but the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit, of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot, perhaps, be corrected, may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquillity of anybody but themselves."

From Chapter VII, Book IV:

"Folly and injustice seem to have been the principles which presided over and directed the first project of establishing those [American] colonies; the folly of hunting after gold and silver mines, and the injustice of coveting the possession of a country whose harmless natives, far from having ever injured the people of Europe, had received the first adventurers with every mark of kindness and hospitality. . . . [I]t was not the wisdom and policy, but the disorder and injustice of the European governments, which peopled and cultivated America."

From Chapter VIII, Book IV:

"It is the industry which is carried on for the benefit of the rich and the powerful, that is principally encouraged by our mercantile system. That which is carried on for the poor and the indigent is too often either neglected or oppressed."

From Chapter IX, Book IV:

"It can never be the interest of the unproductive class to oppress the other two classes. It is the surplus produce of the land, or what remains after deducting the maintenance, first of the cultivators, and afterwards of the proprietors, that maintains and employs the unproductive class. The greater this surplus, the greater must likewise be the maintenance and employment of that class. The establishment of perfect justice, of perfect liberty, and of perfect equality is the very simple secret which most effectually secures the highest degree of prosperity to all the three classes."

From Chapter I, Book V:

"Wherever there is a great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excited the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy to invade his possessions. It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate, that the owner of that valuable property, which is acquired by the labour of many years, or perhaps of many successive generations, can sleep a single night in security. He is at all times surrounded by unknown enemies, whom, though he never provoked, he can never appease, and from whose injustice he can be protected only by the powerful arm of the civil magistrate, continually held up to chastise it. The acquisition of valuable and extensive property, therefore, necessarily requires the establishment of civil government. Where there is no property, or at least none that exceed the value of two or three days labours, civil government is not so necessary. . . . Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is, in reality, instituted for the defence [sic] of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."

From Chapter I, Book V:

"In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is , of the greay body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations; frequently to one or tow. But the undertsandings of the greater part of men are ncessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simply operations, of which the effects, too, are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention, in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. . . . His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society, this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it."

From Chapter II, Book V:

"It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion."

From Chapter II, Book V:

"Every tax, however, is, to the person who pays it, a badge, not of slavery, but of liberty."

[fabian]

A few points about Adam Smith:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPUvQZ3rcQ

[Blackbird123]

I thought he was going to be a pro-capitalist when I first read the book but he just gives the plain truth about most things on capitalism.

[Blackbird123]

Another one that shows he was level headed...... [QUOTE Chapter VII Book IV] The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever. [/QUOTE]

[l'Enfermé]

It's no accident that probably the most famous person to have carefully studied and learned from Smith and The Wealth of Nations was Karl Marx.

[Comrade Trollface]

From Smith's correspondence:

“Laws and government may be considered in this and indeed in every case as a combination of the rich to oppress the poor, and preserve to themselves the inequality of the goods which would otherwise be soon destroyed by the attacks of the poor, who if not hindered by the government would soon reduce the others to an equality with themselves by open violence.”

Makes him sound like an anarchist!
To be fair though, he went on about why the rich stomping on the poor is actually a good thing in his view

[NGNM85]

The Adam Smith of Wealth of Nations has virtually no resemblance, whatsoever, to the patron saint of wall street, this Gordon Gekko character, that is so frequently lionized in the business press.

[Rafiq]

The Adam Smith of Wealth of Nations has virtually no resemblance, whatsoever, to the patron saint of wall street, this Gordon Gekko character, that is so frequently lionized in the business press.

Adam Smith, although theoretically very influential to Marxian economics, must be disregarded ideologically. I know liberalists like you worship the ground he walks on, and, to your own perversion, try to make him out to be some kind of closet socialist, but no.

[NGNM85]

Adam Smith, although theoretically very influential to Marxian economics, must be disregarded ideologically.

Who the fuck do you think you are to, unilaterally, decide for everyone else, what is, or is not, ideologically acceptable?

I know liberalists like you worship the ground he walks on, and, to your own perversion, try to make him out to be some kind of closet socialist, but no.

There is no such thing as a; 'liberalist.' I'm not going to debate words you've just invented, that, as such, have no objective definitions.

I definitely wouldn't call Adam Smith a Socialist, and I certainly don't worship him.

For the second time; my point, my only point, (Which, incidentally, you haven't contested.) is that the character lionized by the Right bears little resemblance to the actual man, and his ideas. End of thought. I know this is a lost cause, but, in the future; I'd rather if you'd confine your responses to things I actually said, as opposed to things you, apparently, want me to have said.

[Comrade Trollface]

Reactionaries, even reactionaries who wrap themselves in a Red Flag, seem to universally flinch whenever an attempt is made to discuss Smith in a clear-headed and critical way, a way that actually engages with his text.

Right-reactionaries fear that their carefully crafted illusion will be broken. And Left-reactionaries? As far as I can figure, a bunch of them just have some sort of irrational fear of discussing any thinker who isn't Marx

[Rafiq]

If you adhere to Adam Smith ideologically (I.e. His Liberalism and Moralism) you're not a socialist. It ends with his political economy.

NGNM85, you piece of shit, who am I to say so? I am, unlike you, a Radical. That's why.

[Comrade Trollface]

Some of us can touch things without adhering to them. If you can't, then you're just too sticky. Take a bath!

[eric922]

If you adhere to Adam Smith ideologically (I.e. His Liberalism and Moralism) you're not a socialist. It ends with his political economy.

NGNM85, you piece of shit, who am I to say so? I am, unlike you, a Radical. That's why.

He never said he adhered to Adam Smith. I swear try responding to what NGMN85 actually said instead of what you've invented in your head. He never said he adhered to Adam Smith. All he said was the real Adam Smith isn't anything like the he is usually portrayed.

Your last sentence isn't even worth discussing, more pathetic ad hominem.

[Dave B]

Adam Smith on ‘combinations’ or in other words trade unionism.

On the Wages of Labour

What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same.

The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labour.

It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms.

The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorises, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen.

We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it.

In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer.

A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, a merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment.

In the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate.

We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen

http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...ook01/ch08.htm

I think Smith was a liberal intellectual and underneath everything else a Proudhonist moralist out of the Scottish enlightenment movement.

Karl took a lot from these kind of people and never really panned ‘Smith’.