Smith also agreed with Marx that under capitalism the wage for most labor will spiral down to the lowest amount capable of keeping a human being alive, damning the proletariat to live in filth regardless of how much wealth they’re actually able to produce. If you look at modern libertarian arguments against wealth redistribution, they all tacitly admit that the system is designed to keep an army of people fighting with one another to be the one who lives with the least. That’s what their inflation argument is, it’s an admission that no matter how much wealth labor creates, or even how much they’re allowed to keep, the cost of living under capitalism will simply rise to ensure that that amount is the new bare minimum. That’s what happened in America after WWII, it took less than one generation of unfettered capitalism to go from “one member of a family can make enough money to keep that family in relative luxury” to “between the two of us we have four jobs and we still go to bed hungry to afford our kids’ medicine”.
Smith was almost an anti-capitalist, but dude was too optimistic. He foresaw how things could go wrong, and how some were already going wrong, but he saw capitalism as the material manifestation of enlightenment ideals (as did most liberals) and thought in the end, when it won out, it would bring the ideals into reality.
I’m sure if he was born a century or more later, he would be a socialist lmao.
Smith also agreed with Marx that under capitalism the wage for most labor will spiral down to the lowest amount capable of keeping a human being alive, damning the proletariat to live in filth regardless of how much wealth they’re actually able to produce. If you look at modern libertarian arguments against wealth redistribution, they all tacitly admit that the system is designed to keep an army of people fighting with one another to be the one who lives with the least. That’s what their inflation argument is, it’s an admission that no matter how much wealth labor creates, or even how much they’re allowed to keep, the cost of living under capitalism will simply rise to ensure that that amount is the new bare minimum. That’s what happened in America after WWII, it took less than one generation of unfettered capitalism to go from “one member of a family can make enough money to keep that family in relative luxury” to “between the two of us we have four jobs and we still go to bed hungry to afford our kids’ medicine”.
Smith was almost an anti-capitalist, but dude was too optimistic. He foresaw how things could go wrong, and how some were already going wrong, but he saw capitalism as the material manifestation of enlightenment ideals (as did most liberals) and thought in the end, when it won out, it would bring the ideals into reality.
I’m sure if he was born a century or more later, he would be a socialist lmao.