Minimum wage and Adam Smith

So I started my research now in a serious way. And I started at the beginning of the modern political economy system... that means the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. Yep, the same guy many a graduate from your local business school prays to, but has no clue what he actually wrote.

Here is a surprise for you. See Mr. Smith had a soft spot for labor... and I mean a real soft spot. And though he could argue and did argue, against himself, his soft spot was such that Mr. Pitt (the Elder) actually used The Wealth of Nations to argue for a Minimum Wage oh well early in the nineteenth century. To be fair, Smith's arguments were used to argue against it in Parliament, but here is the point. Smith understood that Labor needed a minimum wage. So next time any of these bright boys argue that it is well socialist... I guess the High Priest of Capitalism was a socialist.

Ain't that wild?

Me back to the Wealth... having lots of fun with him. I fear Marx will not be this much fun... ah what a difference a writing style can make...

feely, 'conservatives' never read or quote it.

and ironically what he thought WAS his most important book.

But you know that.

I mean Darwin was not even a twinkle in his mother's eyes. I'm not sure if his mother was a twinkle in Grandma's either

:-)

But Hobbes was ahem special.

today... in amongst the Randians...

Conservatives of all stripes and Republicans in particular frequently have major differences with their predecessors.

I think Reagan came out of the blue and changed everything. Fellow republicans called it "voodoo economics", remember?

How many of the tea party jokers carry signs quoting Ayn Rand and conveniently forget her vehement atheism?

Andrew read the Wealth, and actually understood it.

:-)

The tough part is that he was creating a slightly new set of concepts. Some of the concepts sound very foreign. Capitalism isn't a term he coined but his use of the term still frames everything we think about our economic system (e.g. the accumulation of surplus value). The economic arguments are well researched, but his political predictions haven't obviously panned out.

I try to revisit early economic theory for some of the same reasons. None of these dead old white men are who they are made out to be in contemporary politics. Somehow Marx became Stalin and Smith became an infallible God.

I want to get up the energy to reread Smith myself. Good work and good luck.

and Marx's was a critique on Smith Theory of Labor...

Not that many people today, who pray at the Church of the Free Market, realize just how close in some things these two actually were.

But at the political economy level there are similarities. Now as to what drives history, as you well know there is this guy Hegel that Marx was in love with...

:-)

If Smith had read Hegel I fear Smith might have found great use for the Dialectic too.

but then again I learned her Majesty's English first... so it has that familiarity that this colonial American at times is maddening.

One of my Writing Instructors in College was British... oh the jokes about them colonials and their bad grammar!

he liked the dialectic aspect, but action and praxis came first, then the ideals, which is also the foundation of American pragmatism (e.g. Dewey, Mead, Pierce, etc.). It's hard to get out of the dialectical structure, because that's how social life unfolds. However the chicken/egg problem can't start with a thesis, it starts with materials. Mead has a wonderful depiction of the development of language in Mind, Self, Society -which isn't Marxist properly, but shares the same philosophical anthropology (as 'they' say). (I say this not meaning to change the subject).

If you don't like his writing style I would take a pass on Pierre Bourdieu, though I recommend most of his works. He's probably one of the more important social theorists of the past half century. He died a few years ago. His whole program is built on the tension between Hegel and Marx (ideas vs. action/ social vs. mental structure) applied to education, the production of inequalities, culture, colonialism, science, etc.

I look forward to reading the rest of this thread for tidbits. It's been a while since I've read Smith properly. In graduate school we started with Smith, went to Marx, and left them for Max Weber in our classical theory course. I think Weber's critique of Marx is the most relevant. Today you hardly get a Marx critic that has read him, just as hardly as you get a Smith lover who has actually read him. Those as about as much to love as there is to loathe about both of them.

True story... Sociology 101 at State... good teacher, went into some of these things. Problem was I actually had to read Weber in High School (and some Marx... funny thing, my Sociology class in that Mexican HS went into more in depth)... so I was far more familiar than my instructor was ahem comfortable with any student being familiar with.

It was funny. Used to get into arguments over Weber... of course there was this issue that my HS instructor WAS a hard core Marxist...

You don't find those critters generally in the States.

Yep, the same guy many a graduate from your local business school prays to, but has no clue what he actually wrote.

Very true...but regrettably, most people on the left don't have much idea what he wrote either. Bringing up his ideas in any discussion of economic systems usually results in a barrage of left hooks, so to speak. Most of the influential economists are moderate utilitarians whose primary concern was the greater good of society.

No, Marx will not be as much fun.