Bill Lear wrote: > The article is actually pretty good, no? Pulls out a lot of Smith's > disdain for "the masters" and shows he had some genuine sympathy for > workers. Smith might be protesting in Wisconsin...
it _is_ a good article. But even though Smith was "pro-worker" (by the standards set by Milton Friedman, Fred von Hayek, Mrs. T, and other official Smithians) it should be remembered that: 1) at the time, capitalism had not fully been established: class differences between the "masters" and the skilled workers they hired were small, as sometimes in construction even today (where one can be a contractor one day and an employee the next). In many ways, Smith seems to be pushing for more equality in this already relatively equal conflict. (It's the dream of what Marxists call "simple commodity production," in which everyone is a self-employed producer.) 2) I'm no Smith scholar, but I've heard a lot about his disdain for the working poor. I think Michael Perelman has written about that... 3) Smith was in favor of high wages (as is very clear from chapter 8 of the first part of the WoN), but he says that the way to get high wages is by having fast growth of the market system and the division of labor. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
