Adam Smith to Karl Marx:

1

• Adam Smith to Karl Marx
• The Power of Ideas.

2
Adam Smith to Karl Marx The Power of Ideas

• Beginning in the mid 18th century, the
  ideological seeds were sown for the ideological
  conflict of the Cold War.

3
Smith to Marx Capitalism

• The Scottish Philosopher, Adam Smith, has
  been called the first economist and the father of
  capitalism. He published his greatest work,
  Wealth of Nations in 1776.

(www.thedebatesite.org/ plethora/smith.gif)
4
Smith to Marx Capitalism

• Like all the men we will meet in this book,
  Smith was a product of his times. After closely
  observing the relatively small industries of
  England and Scotland he came to a few insightful
  conclusions.

• Smith believed that goods and services (wealth)
  would be most effectively created if government
  allowed people to pursue their own individual
  self interests in competition with others.

5
Smith to Marx Capitalism

• He described this process as an Invisible
  Hand pushing land, labor capital into
  production that would best meet the needs of
  society.

(members.aol.com/tacconimosaic/ maurod.htm)
6
Smith to Marx Capitalism

• As Smith explains, it is not due to the
  generosity of the butcher or baker that we should
  expect our meat and bread. Instead, we should
  appeal to their selfish-ness. We should reward
  those suppliers who produce quality products with
  profit. Thus, our needs are met via their own
  pursuit of wealth.

• Smith also recognized that for self
  interest to be channeled to meet the needs of
  society, it is important that suppliers were in
  competition with other business firms. Otherwise
  their greed would result in consumers paying high
  prices for shoddy goods.

7
Smith to Marx Industrial Capitalism

• For additional information about Smiths
  ideas take a look at an excellent summary taken
  from Robert Heilbroners The Worldly
  Philosophers.
• As the Industrial Revolution progressed in
  England, conditions began to change rapidly

• Larger and larger factories sprung up and
  people flocked to cities to work as farm jobs
  became scarce. Without any government
  regulations to temper business greed, the
  continuing push for greater and greater profits
  resulted in deteriorating working conditions.

8
Smith to Marx Industrial-Capitalism

• Some of these abuses were chronicled by
  Charles Dickens and others. As the number of
  social critics increased, business owners looked
  for a way to justify their treatment of workers.
  They found it in the ideas of Social Darwinism

(www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/1859map/blackingfactory_
dickens.gif)
9
Smith to Marx Industrial Capitalism

• In brief, Spencer stated that those people
  and races that were best suited to survive would
  prosper and those that were not, would suffer.
  This he believed, explained why the working class
  should not be aided by government or private
  charities.

• Charles Darwin had published his ideas
  regarding Natural Selection in 1859.
• (www.time.com/time/europe/photoessays/
  darwin/2.html)
• His ideas regarding the evolution of species
  were quickly applied to people and society by
  Herbert Spencer and others.

(65.107.211.206/painting/ misc/agrant1.html)
10
Smith to Marx Industrial Capitalism

• If they were poor it was not because
  industrial capitalism was unjust, it was because
  they did not possess the talents and
  characteristics need to thrive. He phrased this
  the survival of the fittest.

(www.umbc.edu/.../RitDop/ Discovery-of-Poverty-for
-CHE.htm)
11
Smith to Marx Industrial Capitalism

• Obviously this idea could also be used by the
  wealthy to explain their success. They were
  simply being rewarded for their industry an
  talents.

(www.victoriancrapper.com/ VictorianBath.HTML)
12
Smith to Marx Marxism

• Not all observers of Industrial Capitalism
  interpreted the terrible poverty of the period in
  the same manner as Spencer. Karl Marx examined
  the same conditions but came to some very
  different conclusions.

(users.pandora.be/worldhistory/ pages/marx.htm)
13
Smith to Marx Marxism

• Marx believed that industrial capitalism was
  merely the last in a long line of socio-economic
  systems that resulted in the exploitation of the
  workers by the upper classes.

(www.fes.de/marx/capit.htm)
14
Smith to Marx Marxism

• numbers of worker, who he called the
  Proletariat

• He further went on to predict that capitalism
  contained within it the seeds of its own
  destruction. He believed that the cut-throat
  competition between industries would result in
  fewer surviving business firms and greater

(www.stanford.edu/.../political/
balushek_proletariat.jpg)
15
Smith to Marx Marxism

• that people would no longer have enough money
  left to buy the products that the industries were
  producing. At that point there would be a
  revolution by the proletariat and capitalism
  would end.

• Eventually, poverty would be so extensive,

(www.uecenter.org/internship/ info.htm)
16
Smith to Marx Conclusion

• While Marxs predictions obviously have not
  come to pass, his critical views of the abused of
  working and living conditions were in many way
  justified. The world has changed dramatically
  since these men wrote, but their ideas continue
  to influence people and events.

• What all of these men have in common was a
  desire to analyze the conditions in which they
  lived. As we continue to examine economic
  theories keep in mind the importance of
  understanding the societal conditions that
  spawned the resulting economic analysis.

17

• .

• The end

(www.mootrealm.com/marx.htm)