So Conservatives, you want us to follow Adam Smith? Okay, we can do that,but you won't like it.
Conservatives love Adam Smith, but I wonder if they've read much of him. I was doing some research on him and I game across a few quotes from Wealth of Nations that I thought I would share here. Granted this is a long post, but I thought some people might find these quotes interesting.
From Chapter 1, Book 5:
"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."
Chapter 1, book 5:
"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."
Chapter 2, book 5:
"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."
Chapter 2, book 5:
"Every tax, however, is, to the person who pays it, a badge, not of slavery, but of liberty."
Chapter 4, book 3:
"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."
Chapter 9, book 1:
"[E]Employers 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."
= new reply since forum marked as read
Smith is like every other text and pundit the RW refer to: they only highlight those bits that interest them.
Personally, I think his letters are a great read, too. I love the very first one, sent from college, which basically amounts to "having a wonderful time, please send more money." I guess not a lot has changed for college students since the mid-18th century.
-- Mal
The Wealth to those who pray at the altar, but have not read the holy writ!
