What about Adam Smith?

The general gist that I understand what Adam Smith was doing was making use of the human passions in a constructive manner. Smith, Hume, and later economists thought that the markets could tame or rather temper the wild spirits of human nature and put them to good use. Hegel thought that the market could be a guiding force in rearing in emotions and forming/reinforcing a good and wholesome identity, though I think he was mistaken in that somehow the market could represent an 'institution' where human nature would be guided, which makes me doubtful that the claim that markets can temper human emotions as questionable in whole.

Anyway, that's my stab at what Adam Smith and others thought about 'the market', and how it could transform human behavior into a more civilized and organized (productive) entity that would transform man and his/her ambitions.

The best book on Smith that I know of is "Adam Smith and His Legacy for Modern Capitalism" by Patricia Werhane but you'll probably have to find a copy through the library or something because it's difficult to find. Smith is rarely understood or read properly and the book demolishes a number of myths about him.

Chomsky regularly cites from Smith more so than he does from Marx when talking about Capitalism, which is a rarity from the Left if that interests you.

https://theintercept.com/2015/08/03/239-years-ago-adam-smith-predicted-anger-seattle-business-ceo-pays-workers-well/

https://chomsky.info/warfare02/

Reply to Saphsin

My impression is that Chomsky is a big fan of Smith. Was Smith an anarcho-capitalist as Chomsky self-describes himself? I know he absolutely hates how liberalism has been perverted by the right, which he goes to great lengths on bashing the right for doing.

Thanks for the links and book.

Chomsky is an anarcho-capitalist? That's like calling Ayn Rand a socialist; unless you misspoke, I'm not sure you are familiar with Chomsky's work.

I'm not sure Chomsky is a fan of Smith exactly, but he does cite him as an early sharp thinker who sought ideals that he strongly sympathized with: liberty, equality, solidarity, and so on.

It's important to note that Smith talked about the role of markets, government, labor, and so on in the context of a different age, it was before the age of Corporate Capitalism. If you try to understand the ideals that Smith sought under the conditions of the society he observed, what you would expect him to think of political economy in the modern age is quite different:

On Adam Smith probably would of thought of corporations, quoted from Patricia Werhane:

"Smith [had a] genuine fear of institutions, as shown in his critique of the system of mercantilism, of monopolies, and of political or economic institutions that favor some individuals over others. Smith questions the existence of "joint-stock companies" (corporations), except in exceptional circumstances, because the institutionalization of management power separated from ownership creates institutional management power cut loose from responsibility. Smith's fear is that such institutions might become personified, so that one would regard them as real entities and hence treat them as incapable of being dismantled."

Quoting Saphsin

Chomsky is an anarcho-capitalist? That's like calling Ayn Rand a socialist; unless you misspoke, I'm not sure you are familiar with Chomsky's work.

I could have sworn I heard Chomsky was some form of anarchist, am I wrong about this too?

I know from my superficial reading and watching of Chomsky that he admired Capitalism; but, criticizes any attempt by a right or left winger to describe the past and present, US as 'capitalist' in any manner.

Reply to Question No I'm afraid you're not familiar with his work then....he's from the anarchist tradition from the Left. Then there's the self-described anarchist tradition from the Right, where you see people like Murray Rothbard & Ayn Rand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#Political_views

If you're interested, take a look at Understanding Power as an introduction to his thought.

Reply to Saphsin

I have his copy of 'How the World Works'. I should give it a re-read.

And he seems to be an anarcho-syndicalist from Wiki.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism#Noam_Chomsky

Seems not that far off from liberalism with a leftist twist.

Reply to Question I recommend Understanding Power instead as a first read. You can probably find copies somewhere online the net and it comes with extensive footnotes that are longer than the book itself:

http://www.understandingpower.com/

Reply to Saphsin

It'll be my next book to read. Thanks! :-)

The history of anarchism is mainly Leftist. To say that Chomsky is anarchist tout court is to say he is on the Left.

Reply to jamalrob Yeah anarchism isn't well known at all in mainstream political discourse, partly given that socialism and its history is barely if at all understood by most people and partly that it's not as popular as Marxism as a research subject in university departments.

Quoting Question

Adam Smith saw this policy (call Mercantilism) of making colonies as a mistake and instead thought it better to give them autonomy in decision making and sales of goods produced to the open market. Thus leading to great growth and prosperity and a lessening of resentment towards the British Empire.

He was indeed an advocate for the rights of labourers by forming standards that would enable even the most impoverished to exercise better manoeuvrability that would maximise their options. But whether this 'freedom' meant that he encouraged the equal distribution of wealth is highly unlikely. It is difficult to ascertain whether his morality was merely a practical science that sought to adjust the attitude of society to boost productivity (that capitalism requires ethics in order to be successful) or whether his system of regulating practical actions of moral agency is for the pursuit of a good life; if the former, I am not sure whether he could even be classed as a philosopher.

From what I remember reading of him during my undergraduate, he rejects social contract theorists (in particular Rousseau) because economics is a 'present' and evolving structure and that capitalism requires ethics for success, which makes his understanding of freedom not so much a commitment to justice but rather the ethical impetus for a free-market that leads to the prosperity required to enhance moral agency; his criticism of the slave-trade and views on distributive justice may challenge the view that he was nothing but a manic for economics.

Reply to TimeLineOh that what you consider unlikely is exactly what Smith intended to do. What often confuses people is to put ourselves in the shoes of Smith who lived in the age of society in which the consequence of liberalization of markets weren't well understood. Hi pre-conception was that if you set up a system of perfect freedom of market competition, it would lead up to a system of perfect equality. It was an argument he carefully construed that we now know to be a really bad argument.

"[Smith] believes that ideally, competition should be among parties of similar advantage. A system of perfect liberty, he argues, should create a situation in which "the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock . . . be either perfectly equal or continually tending to equality." Smith sees perfect liberty as a necessary but not a sufficient condition for competition, but perfect competition occurs only when both parties in the exchange are on more or less equal grounds, whether it be competition for labor, jobs, consumers, or capital." - Patricia Werhane, Adam Smith and His Legacy for Modern Capitalism,

This was the passages from Adam Smith she was referring to:

"The whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock must, in the same neighbourhood, be either perfectly equal or continually tending to equality. If in the same neighbourhood, there was any employment evidently either more or less advantageous than the rest, so many people would crowd into it in the one case, and so many would desert it in the other, that its advantages would soon return to the level of other employments. This at least would be the case in a society where things were left to follow their natural course, where there was perfect liberty, and where every man was perfectly free both to chose what occupation he thought proper, and to change it as often as he thought proper." - Wealth of Nations

Quoting Saphsin

Hi pre-conception was that if you set up a system of perfect freedom of market competition, it would lead up to a system of perfect equality. It was an argument he carefully construed that we now know to be a really bad argument.

Indeed, most economic systems almost rely on inequality to maximise wealth, but from what I remember of Smith, equality is not the equal distribution of wealth, but that maximising economic wealth successfully - that is sustainably - must be done under the moral banner of freedom. While hierarchical divisions of labour exist, there is an economic system within each of those divisions that encourage wealth production (similar to how Foucault said that power - unlike Marx - could maximise productivity). That is, economic inequality must exist - a wealthy businessman and an impoverished labourer - but it doesn't necessarily mean that one should restrict the freedom of an impoverished labourer through means of say slavery but that they too should have the ability to change and move. This will provide the right economic dynamics that will enable equality, but not the equal distribution of wealth.

Reply to Saphsin I should add, comparatively the Master/Slave Dialectic comes to mind.