In
the
previous posting on this subject, we started looking at the “Invisible Hand”
of the much-excoriated Adam Smith, and realized that at least some of what
Smith was accused of really had no basis in fact.
Interestingly, a fact we didn’t bring up is
that, while Smith is generally portrayed as some kind of “High Priest of Capitalism”
on the strength of a rather profound misunderstanding of his Invisible Hand
argument, it turns out that he was actually far more labor-oriented than people
suppose.
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| "I LOVE technology!" |
Smith was, in
fact, much more concerned about the role of labor and non-owning workers than
is usually acknowledged.
He really didn’t
pay too much attention to capital and its owners, except to note that they were
often fools for thinking that technology could ever replace human beings as
either moral or economic agents!
No, really. It’s in Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. Admittedly, this blindness toward the effect
of technology is particularly remarkable in Smith as he wrote at the beginning
of the Industrial Revolution and was already seeing some of the effects.
Nevertheless, Smith
expounded at some length on a crucial observation. This is the fact that the rich can either
satisfy their wants and desires for that which is above the common or the bare
necessaries by hiring servants, buying the labor productions of others, or
purchasing technology. As he said,
How many people ruin themselves
by laying out money on trinkets of frivolous utility? What pleases these lovers of toys is not so
much the utility, as the aptness of the machines which are fitted to promote
it. All their pockets are stuffed with
little conveniencies. They contrive new
pockets, unknown in the clothes of other people, in order to carry a greater
number. They walk about loaded with a
multitude of baubles, in weight and sometimes in value not inferior to an
ordinary Jew’s-box, some of which may sometimes be of some little use, but all
of which might at all times be very well spared, and of which the whole utility
is certainly not worth the fatigue of bearing the burden. (Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Book IV, Chapter I, §6.)
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| G.K. Chesterton |
Of course, to
Smith (in stereotypical Scots fashion), anything above the necessaries of life
was to be considered “frivolous,” for, “[t]he rich man consumes no more food
than his poor neighbor. . . . The desire of food is limited in every man by the
narrow capacity of the human stomach; but the desire of the conveniencies and
ornaments . . . seems to have no limit or certain boundary.” (Smith,
The Wealth of Nations.
Book I, Part xi, Chapter 7.)
He compared the urge of the rich to surround
themselves with servants and employees as a similar manifestation of the desire
for convenience and ostentation.
Agreeing with G.K. Chesterton (sort of), Smith reasoned that
employing numbers of people is to be preferred over ownership of technology
because it adds the moral sentiment of approbation both from those employed
(probably out of gratitude for their employment) and from others in recognition
of the employer’s status as a rich and beneficent employer (Smith counted
beneficence as a moral sentiment, somewhat analogous to an admixture of charity
and justice). The purchaser of
technology is seen as a figure to be ridiculed (much like the “computer nerd”
of today), and so is not due the same sentiment of approbation as the employer
of hundreds who provide him with the same utility and convenience as that
supplied by technology to its owner.
But labor?
Absolutely. As Smith explained in The Theory of Moral
Sentiments,
 |
| Yup. That's the guy. |
It
is to no purpose, that the proud and unfeeling landlord views his
extensive fields, and without a thought for the wants of his brethren, in
imagination consumes himself the whole harvest that grows upon them. The homely
and vulgar proverb, that the eye is larger than the belly, never was more fully
verified than with regard to him. The capacity of his stomach bears no
proportion to the immensity of his desires, and will receive no more than that
of the meanest peasant. The rest he is obliged to distribute among those, who
prepare, in the nicest manner, that little which he himself makes use of, among
those who fit up the palace in which this little is to be consumed, among those
who provide and keep in order all the different baubles and trinkets which are
employed in the oeconomy of greatness; all of whom thus derive from his luxury
and caprice, that share of the necessaries of life, which they would in vain
have expected from his humanity or his justice. The produce of the soil maintains
at all times nearly that number of inhabitants which it is capable of
maintaining. The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and
agreeable. They consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their
natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency,
though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands
whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires,
they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led
by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of
life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal
portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without
knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the
multiplication of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few
lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been
left out in the partition. These last, too, enjoy their share of all that it
produces. In what constitutes the real happiness of human life, they are in no respect
inferior to those who would seem so much above them. In ease of the body and
peace of the mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and
the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that
security which kings are fighting for.
Ordinarily we
wouldn’t have relied on such an extended quote, but it is essential to give the
context — and Smith’s actual words — when pointing out that he seemed far more
concerned with the owners of labor than with the owners of capital. To make our case, we need only point out two
items from the above passage:
·
The rich are described as “proud and unfeeling,”
consumed with “selfishness and rapacity,” and clearly labeled inhumane and unjust,
intending nothing other than “the
gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires,” and yet,
·
The
rich are forced to act in a manner that benefits others in order to satisfy
their own desires, regardless how selfish or inordinate, for (in Smith’s
opinion) they can do so only through the labor of others, thereby resulting in
a distribution of the necessities of life equivalent to that which would have
occurred had the Earth been equitably divided among everyone.
Of course, there is an
enormous flaw in Smith’s argument, but it wasn’t because he took the part of
the rich against the poor. Exactly the
opposite, in fact, as we will see when we look at this subject again.
#30#
