I must revise Smith by saying the obvious, THE FREE MARKET INEVITABLY LEADS TO EXTREME CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH BECAUSE IT ALWAYS BECOMES TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS PROBLEM DUE TO THE RELENTNESS PURSUIT OF PROFIT IN A FREE ACCESS ENVIRONMENT. (The free market ALWAYS concentrates Wealth, because it is a battlefield and also because competition is unsustainable). I, also, must revise Marx to make him more useful by stating the obvious, We are free to look at the society and aggregate all employees into one Employee and all owners into one Owner. Ownership is a claim, not effort. The Owner makes the claim, then the Employee enters to protect and grow what has been claimed as owned by the Owner. All efforts are done by the aggregated Employee, the aggregated Owner just owns, nothing else, no effort what-so-ever. In short, The aggregated Employee invents and makes the products then sells the products to itself and then pays a fee called Profit to an 'Owner' for the permission to own the same products the aggregated Employee itself made and sold to itself. Ownership is not effort, it is a political claim.
There are literally cult members out there that worship the "invisible hand" as the true hand of "god". They also believe themselves as "shepherds of man" and whoever has the most wealth is the most beloved by that same god. This was spurned on by the history of kings, as well as the prosperity gospel bs. The Oligarchy caught hold of that in the early robber baron years and it transmitted truly with believers in their children. Those children then went on to begin to destroy this nation and ally with Oligarchies around the world as they spread their virus. Now the Oligarchies of the world work together to thwart the people, even going so far as having a nation go to war against themselves so they can maneuver easier for opportunities to take more from the people, the favor is then returned. The cycle of abuse.
@@IGNEUS1607 lol you can think that, but you can look it all up yourself. Just the facts, no conspiracies. For one you can at least start with the Business Coup of 1933. Look up all the prosperity style gospels and big tent revivals and start looking at all the actions these Oligarchs have taken in order to further this into reality. Btw the "invisible hand" is a capitalism economic term, just in case you're unfamiliar.
@@justanotherdayinthelife9841 Bro I fully agree that capitalism sucks but your rhetorical style is really bad. Do less of the epic fantasy search thing, it's really unhinged out in the wild.
Adam Smith once considered becoming a priest during a time when every good Catholic boy considered becoming a priest and every good Catholic girl considered becoming a nun. Let us not forget that young Joseph Stalin lived in a monastery and studied to become a priest. The world was different then.
Adam Smith was NOT a Catholic. He was a believer of the Church of Scotland. In fact, he was not a very religious person, although he did believe in an Almighty God.
@wokeemperor4345 By your logic, is Singapore facist? Somehow, even if it was entertained it's still better than all communist countries combined throughout the years and even modern ones right? Clueless response expecting.
I've heard that Marx didn't necessarily see religion as harmful. When he said "religion is the opium of the people," he didn't necessarily mean that as bad thing, but saw religion as something to ease the pain of whatever emotional pain people might be experiencing.
In general, Marx made very few moral statements in his works. He explained how things worked, not how good or bad they were. He supported communism not because it was morally better than capitalism, but because he thought it was the logical outcome of society's current contradictions.
Considering Marx was in England and had chronic pain he probably was prescribed or self medicated with it to some degree, the comparison still isn't flattering but its potentially more nuanced and sympathetic
Smith points out the potential for alienation briefly in Wealth of Nations and especially in Theory of Moral Sentiments his other work which changes the tone of his more popular work
His Moral Sentiments boom procedes and gives context to The Wealth of Nations. Most things about tones are because I think pop understanding of the work and not the work itself.
I think this overstates Smith's aversion to governmental regulation. Smith, especially in Theory of Moral Sentiments, acknowledges that human nature is not entirely altruistic and that self-interest can sometimes lead to immoral actions. In such cases, the government should play a role in enforcing moral and ethical standards through laws and regulations. He was coming out of the era of mercantilism where govt regulation was way over the top. He was actually a pretty optimistic guy about human nature. I tend to think that is generally correct, but in a world of global, somewhat faceless, commerce it is a lot easier to not really understand the harms to which one (or a firm) might inadvertently or bureaucratically/automatically be contributing (e.g., selling fertilizer without thinking that it could be used for a bomb). As Primo Levi said, "Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions."
Yup. We had an entire revolution to free us from the diktat of people whose presence in office we had no control over. Getting close to that situation again, by all the evidence.
Props for getting the definition correct on the invisible hand. It's not a market regulating force but a prosperity incentivizing one. However, your portrayal of Smith as believing that positive freedom by state intervention did not exist is completely wrong. Smith explicitly stated that state intervention was necessary to ensure free markets by prohibiting conglomeration into monopolies and prohibiting economic rents (natural monopolies). These are clear examples of positive freedoms imposed by state action. Of course, you won't hear this from the likes of the Heritage Foundation.
At Smith's time, the market was already captured by an unholy alliance between the state (i.e. the monarchy) and big capital through the policy of mercantilism. Smith wanted the market to be free of this unholy alliance because he wanted this conspiracy to end. So he against state intervention and for free markets so that the market could be more competitive and not monopolized by the East India Company. At his time, free markets led to competitive markets. Today, the Heritage Foundation and its ilk invoke Smith to create free markets that lead to giant multinational corporations, something that Smith would have been dead against.
It's completely inaccurate to say that for Smith governments can only take away our freedom. The Wealth of Nations lays out very significant roles for government in creating the infrastructure necessary for markets to exist: not just physical infrastructure, but laws, regulations, and enforcement mechanisms.
Marx would be more disgusted by modern communism than Smith would be by modern capitalism. The simple truth is capitalism isn’t perfect, but it’s profoundly better than communism.
@@nickca6104 What modern communism? Communism has never happened; Socialism has, and I don't think Marx would be disgusted by it, considering it has fared much better than capitalism does.
"Efficiency VS Meaning" Smith wasn't 100% pro-division of labor. He foresaw the concept alienation behind it that Marx later developped. He's known for the idea of division because historically he was one of the first advocates of it, not because he would be still one of the most fervent promoters of it today. He's way much moderate on this point than most economic students thinks.
“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.” John Maynard Keynes
What's nasty about wanting to survive and have enough resources to endure whatever hardships life throws at you? You can be a full blown supporter of socialism and realize that this quote, whether from Keynes or not, is extraordinarily stupid
This was a cool video. I think the key criticism of Smith would be his flawed understanding of the power dynamic between rich and poor, and the key criticism of Marx would be his toxic philosophical presumptions that portray everyone as having equal wants and needs that can be rationally calculated, as well as the reduction of human motivation to acquisition and oppression.
He never said anything about a power dynamic between rich and poor but a history of class struggle. Nor did he say everyone had equal wants or needs. Nor did he say everything can be rationally calculated. He and Engels denounced lies and pseudoscience like Mathus and the doomsday nutcases like overpopulation crackpots. Today we have the irrational fear of nuclear power, climate change and fossil fuels being responsible for everything bad. Idiots who want planning to remain a corporate government secrets while talking about free markets being the solution to government planning.
Also don't forget that Smith's writings and professional journalistic work and Marx's writings and professional journalistic work are like 70 to 100 years apart.
@@dweee97 So I opened a bakery, invested $100k in it. It's the greatest in the area, people love my cakes. It grows, so I need to hire 3 workers to help me out. Now, according to Marx, these 3 guys have 75% of my business. How ridiculous, right? Moreover they change the recipe, to easier one, so that their job is easier. Cakes are not as good, so business goes down. These 3 dudes don't care, they quit and find a job in another bakery. It's easy for them. People in the area on the other hand lost a great bakery and I lost my $100k. Do you think I will risk opening another business? How long will i take that there will be no more bakeries in the area? This is utopian idea, that will never work in real life. Sorry
@@wittttttt according to marx, your 3 workers should: be paid what they bring to the table, have democratic control of their working conditions. Your point of them changing the type of cake is just dumb, them changing it will make them less money, as their labor will bring less use value. Also your point about you losing 100k is wrong as your paycheck will be equal to the use value you produce. So if your cakes are worth 100k you will get your 100k.
You do not say anything about the most important thing in Smith's and Marx's theories, i.e labour theory of value. According to Smith all value comes from workmen's labour. Capitalists and landlords take a part from worker's labour in form of rent and profit. Smith also mentions that profit of capitalists should not be confused with labour of supervision and organization. He claims that profit has nothing to do with that. Profit is proportional to capital invested not to the labour of supervision. And such labour very often perform with hired clerks who are paid salaries. Marx takes that framework and expands it and calls it exploitation. But essentially they have the same view on the source of value, which is in labour but not in capital.
@@camaradamanuel5025 It is in Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations". CHAPTER VI Of the Component Parts of the Price of Commodities “The profits of stock, it may perhaps be thought are only a different name for the wages of a particular sort of labour, the labour of inspec- tion and direction. They are, however, altogether different, are regulated by quite different principles, and bear no proportion to the quantity, the hardship, or the ingenuity of this supposed labour of inspection and dir- ection. They are regulated altogether by the value of the stock employed, and are greater or smaller in proportion to the extent of this stock” ... “In this state of things, the whole produce of labour does not always belong to the labourer. He must in most cases share it with the owner of the stock which employs him.” ... CHAPTER VIII G.ed.p82 Of the Wages of Labour “In that original state of things, which precedes both the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock, the whole produce of labour belongs to the labourer. He has neither landlord nor master to share with him.” “But this original state of things, in which the labourer enjoyed the whole produce of his own labour, could not last beyond the first introduc- tion of the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock.” “As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a share of almost all the produce which the labourer can either raise, or collect from it. His rent makes the first deduction from the produce of the labour which is employed upon land.“ In the similar way stock owners demand their tribute from produce of labourer in the same way as landlords demand their rent. By fact of owning stuff they have to get a tribute (part of produce of laborer) (It is not a direct quote from Smith but it follows logically from his writings) Adam Smith even wrote about class struggle in the same chapter: “What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labour. It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, a merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate. We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uni- form combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We sel- dom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of. Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution, and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do, without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are fre- quently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen; who sometimes too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of their labour. Their usual pretences are, some- times the high price of provisions; sometimes the great profit which their masters make by their work. But whether their combinations be offensive or defensive, they are always abundantly heard of. In order to bring the point to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loudest clam- our, and sometimes to the most shocking violence and outrage. They are desperate, and act with the folly and extravagance of desperate men, who must either starve, or frighten their masters into an immediate compliance with their demands. The masters upon these occasions are just as clamor- ous upon the other side, and never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants, labourers, and journeymen. The workmen, accordingly, very seldom derive any advantage from the violence of those tumultuous combinations, which, partly from the interposition of the civil magistrate, partly from the neces- sity superior steadiness of the masters, partly from the necessity which the greater part of the workmen are under of submitting for the sake of present subsistence, generally end in nothing, but the punishment or ruin of the ringleaders.” www.ibiblio.org/ml/libri/s/SmithA_WealthNations_p.pdf
Great video. In the past 11 minutes I gained a slightly more nuanced view of both Smith and Marx and I'm not even sure whether you have a preference for one or the other. You've done a great job creating an insightful yet balanced video.
Adam Smith and Marx actually had some opinions in common regarding the division of labor. Smith recognized the dehumanization inherent in reducing workers to being essentially cogs in an industrial process. He acknowledged the tedium and the lack of artistry and expression, but he had faith that workers who found those conditions disagreeable would use their freedom to choose more satisfying employment. He had too much faith in human goodness to predict what was obvious to Marx in hindsight. Speaking of being overly optimistic, are any of you living in cooperative communities under the sole governance of your own will and judgment like Marx predicted? of course...it could still happen.
marx wasn't the father of socialism since socialism itself predates marxism marxism is but one variant of socialism, referring to a specific group dynamic, that of the industrial-economic group
Smith did discuss the concept of alienation through his observations on the first industrial revolution. Also, Smith had few data points to work on for a democracy or a republic at his time, and "freedom" involved lack of a ruler controlling things, not a government representing the people which Marx was being his ideas on.
Marx: Worker's should own the means of production Also Marx: Workers who own their means of production are petty bourgeoisies and thus side with bourgeoisies instead of proletariats
@@missk1697 Marx himself coined the term petty bourgeoisie and even explained what it is. Modern examples of petty bourgeoisies are truck drivers who own their own trucks and everyone who is self-employed
Petty bourgeoisie = someone who has some degreee control and independence over his/her own labor. May also have access to property in some cases. Bourgeoisie = someone who has control over other people's labour through wage labour in order to extract value from it in the form of surplus value, and does so through exerting total control over the means of production. It's not so difficult to understand the difference between the two m8.
@@PRSRod Marx literally described petty bourgeoisies as self-employed artisans and small shopkeepers and always, not "may in some cases" owns their property. If you are self-employed, you don't have "some degree" of independency, you have full degree of independency. That is why Soviet Union cracked on small family farmers(kulaks) who only produced for themselves and meaby sold some to others
I don't disagree with that, however my point was that nowadays you don't necessarily have to own property to be able to work independently - freelance workers are the epitome of this, for instance. I think that the way in which one conceptualizes a given social class must have attention to the historical time of the object of analysis. In that sense, having direct control over one's own labour does not necessarily imply that you MUST be a property owner (and what counts as a mean of production I'd also say).
So you can either be oppressed by the government or you can be oppressed by the industrialist, or worse maybe the industrialist controls the government, and then you’re really in trouble. I tend to prefer the Adam Smith style definition of freedom, because at least everybody in that instance is a private individual. The government can provide a hand out, but they hand out comes from the hard work and labor of somebody else, so there’s no such thing as the government actually taking care of us, just forcibly shifting resources around. People acting in their own self interest, where individual greed is pitted against another individuals greed works incredibly well, right up until someone corners the market, and it is only at that point the government really needs to take a look and see if intervention is actually warranted.
For the most part, governments do so already for public infrastructure. It doesn't make much sense to build another power plant just to try to take market share of an existing market. Power plants and the associated power lines are expensive, and even the most expensive existing electricity sources will be cheaper than what you can offer on your own power grid, assuming all else like labor costs equal. This is why water lines are operated or contracted out by the government
Marx's view of freedom seems to imply that a prison inmate is free while a wild bird is not. The prisoner has state-provided essentials while the bird does not. Or am I misunderstanding?
Big misunderstanding. Marx didn't view freedom from a freedom to or a freedom from pov. Humans labor to survive and Capitalists exploit this need using wage labor. He believed labor should have meaning, as in people have hobbies and do things for their own benefit/fun with others. We are social animals and therefore the economy should reflect that.
No economic theorist has taken into account the most important factor in economics: Human psychology and irrational common behaviour en masse. For this alone, there should be a merging of the fields of sociology, psychology and economics to fully understand the non-quantitative movements and consequences of macro-economic decisions. "Socio-Psycho-Economics" In what quantitative academic field can you find such a lack of consensus as you do in economics? That's because it's dogmatic ideology based on wishful thinking, drizzled with personal moral beliefs. And greed.
This is NOT how Smith uses "the invisible hand" though. You're right in saying that the notion of competition eventually incentivizing people to produce better is how we use Smith's invisible hand metaphor today; but that isn't how he meant it. Smith was talking about cross-border trade and its effects - namely the movement of capital away from England, the loss of domestic capital stock from offshoring and other unintended consequences to the public good.
Marx understood capitalism much better than anyone else. His ideas of revolution and communism proved wrong. Smith was just genius in his formulation of the "invisible hand". What today's "free-marketeers" are promoting is quite the opposite, they are favoring a class of rentier capitalists and monopolies, probably closer to the kind practiced by the East India Company or the Spanish Monopoly in America, which Smith fiercely criticized.
@@tabo01 Marx didn't really offer solutions, except that the workers of the world should unite. In other words, that the solution was political, not economic. The vague notion of "dictatorship of the proletariat" was drawn from the experiences of his time, the revolutions of 1848 and the Paris Commune. The Russian experience with the soviets in 1905 and 1917 seemed to follow that model and prove him right, but that was about it. The state of assembly and permanent debate (plus a good deal of violence) only lasts for the revolutionary period. Nothing was proposed about what should happen after that when everyone went back home. So the "dictatorship of the proletariat" ended up in the dictatorship of the Party. I don't know if Marx is to blame for that.
I must revise Smith by saying the obvious, THE FREE MARKET INEVITABLY LEADS TO EXTREME CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH BECAUSE IT ALWAYS BECOMES TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS PROBLEM DUE TO THE RELENTNESS PURSUIT OF PROFIT IN A FREE ACCESS ENVIRONMENT. (The free market ALWAYS concentrates Wealth, because it is a battlefield and also because competition is unsustainable). I, also, must revise Marx to make him more useful by stating the obvious, We are free to look at the society and aggregate all employees into one Employee and all owners into one Owner. Ownership is a claim, not effort. The Owner makes the claim, then the Employee enters to protect and grow what has been claimed as owned by the Owner. All efforts are done by the aggregated Employee, the aggregated Owner just owns, nothing else, no effort what-so-ever. In short, The aggregated Employee invents and makes the products then sells the products to itself and then pays a fee called Profit to an 'Owner' for the permission to own the same products the aggregated Employee itself made and sold to itself. Ownership is not effort, it is a political claim.
@@tabo01 Marx wasn't big on solutions though, moreso predictions of outcomes. He thought the workers would inevitably want democratic control themselves but he didn't have much in the way for how they'd go about it.
Smith got it really wrong about the Wealth of Nations. His model sucks, because he wrongly assumes that Competition is eternal and sustainable. It is not. The market and trade are a battlefield where Profit is the only thing that matters to someone which ensures that ALL wealth concentrates in the hands of the 'ONE WHO MAKES THE POST PROFIT FOR THE LONGEST TIME POSSIBLE'. EVENTUALLY, Everybody else is unable to present any realistic Competition that matters in terms of Smith's market theories.
@@reasonerenlightened2456Marx got it so much more wrong on the idea that value stems from labor; value is extremely subjective. people don’t want something because labor was put into it, people put labor into something because they want it. also in a real world socialist/communist society, the government becomes the ultimate monopoly; they hold all power
@@adg9042 In what sense "value stems from labor"? 1) Labor is required to add value? (fish in the river is less valuable than the same fish on the market) 2) Machines just copy value, without creating new value? 3) Is the hammer a creator of value or the person who uses it? In reality , Value stems from the individual placing stuff in order of their importance for that individual. When two individuals meet and talk value then the price emerges based on how much leverage each individual has over the other.
Marx would never have blamed some particular guy of inventing capitalism, at least according to his ideology. He thought that this was a historically necessary and somewhat natural step in the evolution of a society. Not even a bad thing, since a society otherwise would have got stuck with feudalism or something premodern, never becoming ready for socialism.
I don't think the soviet union was even close to the socialism Marx envisioned and wrote about. In the Soviet Union, the means of production just moved into the hands of a political elite instead of an economic elite. The existence of the Soviet Union doesn't mean communism is impossible (though I don't think we'll get there in the near future). Even if you view Marx's socialism as a utopia, why wouldn't people wanna live in a utopia? Also, even if communism is impossible, the works of Marx have proven to be extremely useful when discussing ways to improve the capitalist system for the average person.
I don’t think the opium quote means what you described. It was my understanding that he accepted religion as a comfort for people. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
It would be false to say that Smith would never conceive of "an interference from the government making people freer" (5:39). The Wealth of Nations is targeted at governmental interference via enforcing monopolies (which suppresses innovation and competition) and levying tariffs (which interferes with trade and also suppresses competition). But he's not by any means an anti-government ideologue, and in books IV and V of Wealth of Nations, he does espouse a positive role for government and taxation, including funding an equitable court system, building and maintaining infrastructure, and educating the youth.
Marx said the existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery. Marx wanted the workers of the world to unite and rule themselves, since the working class produced all wealth. Lookup Works of Karl Marx, 1844. Critical Notes on the Article. The King of Prussia and Social Reform.
That statement seems to support a democratic form of government rather than an economic system. What all the modern day communists that I talk to don't seem to understand is that someone always has to be in charge and the person will get corrupted by the power. 2 million people can't all decide something together or their whole lives will be spent making decisions and nothing will get done. So they end up electing someone to represent them in a government of some kind, then the government officials start to make decisions that benefit them over the people as they get corrupted by power. But because its a totalitarian system, not based on freedom of the individual, none of the people can stand against the government and it devolves into slavery while pretending to be a "peoples republic". This is why the Western style democratic states with the freedom of speech and rights of the people against the government have succeeded, they haven't yet devolved into tyrannical governments ruled by dictators. They will eventually just like all countries have failed eventually. Communism, with its hatred of the individual, is fatally susceptible to devolving into dictatorship. Once that happens it doesn't matter what economic system is in place the country is going to fail. Of course a centrally planned economy is also weaker than a free market. Humans can't predict the demand of goods and services very well without free market price information. Thus centrally planned economies suffer from a lack of information and over and under produce their goods in ways that bog down the economy (severe shortages in necessary things like food and energy). Free markets almost always over produce goods which allows the system to grow more smoothly without severe shortages. Both economies will probably get there eventually but the free market will get their first, thus always out competing a centrally planned economy. As to the problems of free markets, humans will always seek advantage over each other, only a capitalist system directs some of that energy for the good of all. Bad actors and immoral behavior will have to be thwarted by the government when it pops up. Thus even a free market economy should be subject to a strong government so the capital owners can't get away with making themselves into oligarchs. The west currently suffers from oligarchs effectively manipulating the governmental systems to enacting regulations that don't hold back the oligarchs but in fact help solidify their power. Thus corruption is the biggest problem not capitalism, and the only way to stop corruption is through political reform from an educated electorate, the people need to rule themselves not these oligarchs. Hopefully this will happen in my lifetime and a renaissance of sane public policy will reform the west into countries for the people by the people.
An impossible goal, which is why it's so terrifying. Because the transition... will become the endgoal, as the endgoal can never happen due to human nature. So it'll always be in the 'transition' to communism, and thus any atrocity to reach such utopian endgoal will be justified as a necessary evil.
@@12nguyenphanminhkhoi90 all their boss does is take what they earn and give back a paltry sum. what you're thinking of is management, which would still be a thing under any form of socialism/communism
Essentially Marx did not disagree with free trade principles and based his economics on some of Smith's ideas which he called English economic principles. The question of religion at the end is truly irrelevant, I don't think Smith was an idealist, so it doesn't really matter.
I read Adam Smith's Wealth of the Nations from beginning to end, and it seems for me that the author of this film has not the done it. Summary of A Smith's work looks here like a repetition of usually quoted and best known extracts from the book though neglect much more of deeply thought content of the book. So I recommend reading the whole book with thought.
2:30. Actually Marx is not the "father" or even the inventor of Socialism. Socialism existed as an ideology long before. Marx and Engels often attacked this orginal form calling it "utipoian Socialism" versus their own "Scientific Socialism"(Marxism). They argued the orginal was never going to work, because it only focused on building small isolated rural communities while ignoring taking on the Capitalist owner class that would inevitably conspire to destoy it. That´s why Marxism emphasize the importance in the seizure of power by the workers aspect in all industrialized countires.
@@PolitictalDipsit No. Since that is not a definition of what a Founder is. He invented Marxism. He do not get to define what Socialism is, since it was already invented before he was born.
@@PolitictalDipsit Well they are somewhat synonymous. But founding is more used when describing creating organizations. As in a person becomes a founder when he creates a company or political party/movement. So Marx founded/created/invented Marxism and several theories that many Socialists/Communists believe in. But Socialism is a way more broader Ideology than just Marxism. And if you read his writings you would know how Marx criticized the strategies and end goals of many Socialist at the time and yes indirectly of most self-described Socialists today.
Smith said that a society cannot be healthy where most of the citizens are poor. So he did care about class struggle. In fact he wrote a lot on it. His conclusions were always rooted in harnessing human motivation where Carl Marx resented human motivation and sought to remove it through revolution, government intervention and redistribution. Which sounds a lot like murderous aristocratic theivery to me.
great video! I like the focus on the different using of the term freedom. Seems to me like Smith used it to describe negative freedom or, to be free from any ruling or constraining forces and Marx mostly used it to describe positive freedom or, to have the necessary means and ressources to be able to do something. Neither is inherently more right or wrong than the other, just like you said merely two very different takes on the same issue.
No, Smith does not contradict Marx's commentary on division of labour. In wealth of Nations, Smith also makes the same kinds of arguments about the negatives of division of labour, and even implicitly argues that government intervention may be needed to counteract these negatives: "In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging, and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any other employment than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilised society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it." The quote comes from book 5.
@@johnirvine9942 it's about the workers. They are the ones who make everything flow and happen, yet they aren't compensated in whole for all of the labor that they do and have little to no say in their own working conditions, all for the sake of the capitalist's profit.
@@brandttrotter5600 okay but if there were no entrepreneurs who are able to take the risk and invest in some market what would the workers do? Im a leftist but you cant see things like that. We need rich people because the rich create jobs and wealth. Im im wrong please explain me why
@@anapereirinha8689 Jobs are created by the demand and wealth is created by labor. Rich people do not create anything.. they only use their money to appropriate the wealth (profit) created by workers. One may say that rich people finance, organise and manage the production but it could be organised by the government and then managed by the workers instead. So now the wealth is not obtained by one single owner but instead all the profits are distributed between the workers and the government, which in its turn spends those money on social support of any kind (like free housing, free education and medical care, as well as building new factories, plants, companies etc. to provide jobs for the rest of the society)
you claim "interference from government is making us freer, which is something you'd never hear from smith". Here's a quote from wealth of nations to directly contradict you: "Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters." and for smith, this notion of equitability between the rights of capital and labour is a key parameter of what a free market means to him: "THE whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labor and stock must, in the same neighborhood, be either perfectly equal, or continually tending to equality. If in the same neighborhood, there was any employment evidently either more or less advantageous than the rest, so many people would crowd into it in the one case, and so many would desert it in the other, that its advantages would soon return to the level of other employments." by stock, he means capital. Smith writes at length about how european and british government interference are primarily used by the rich to give themselves the edge, and so distort this natural equilibrium between the advantages and disadvantages of labour and capital. That is why he writes that it is always just for the legislature to act to mitigate this. Sorry, it's clear to me that you haven't properly read wealth of nations. So much more you say is very incorrect. Your video seems to be just based on a summary you've seen. Another point is that "invisible hand" only ever appears once in his wealth of nations really as just a throw away term he uses. He does not make an argument that self interest is good for the whole of society, he only argues that the self interest of those that live by wages is goods for society. For those who live by profits, smith says: "His employers constitute the third order, that of those who live by profit. It is the stock that is employed for the sake of profit, which puts into motion the greater part of the useful labor of every society. The plans and projects of the employers of stock regulate and direct all the most important operations of labor, and profit is the end proposed by all those plans and projects. But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity, and fall with the declension, of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich, and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin. The interest of this third order, therefore, has not the same connection with the general interest of the society as that of the other two. Merchants and master manufacturers are, in this order, the two classes of people who commonly employ the largest capitals, and who by their wealth draw to themselves the greatest share of the public consideration. As during their whole lives they are engaged in plans and projects, they have frequently more acuteness of understanding than the greater part of country gentlemen. As their thoughts, however, are commonly exercised rather about the interest of their own particular branch of business, than about that of the society, their judgment, even when given with the greatest candor (which it has not been upon every occasion), is much more to be depended upon with regard to the former of those two objects, than with regard to the latter. Their superiority over the country gentleman is, not so much in their knowledge of the public interest, as in their having a better knowledge of their own interest than he has of his. It is by this superior knowledge of their own interest that they have frequently imposed upon his generosity, and persuaded him to give up both his own interest and that of the public, from a very simple but honest conviction, that their interest, and not his, was the interest of the public. The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."
No, Smith does not contradict Marx's commentary on division of labour. In wealth of Nations, Smith also makes the same kinds of arguments about the negatives of division of labour, and even implicitly argues that government intervention may be needed to counteract these negatives: "In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging, and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any other employment than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilised society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it."
@@zesky6654 Marx as heavily inspired by Smith. Like the youtuber says, they are more common than most people think, only he doesn't go far enough, and one of those people is him.
“The true rightist is not a man who wants to go back to this or that institution for the sake of a return; he wants first to find out what is eternally true, eternally valid, and then either to restore or reinstall it, regardless of whether it seems obsolete whether it is ancient, contemporary, or even without precedent, brand new, "ultramodern." Old truths can be rediscovered, entirely new ones found. The Man of the Right does not have a time-bound, but a sovereign mind.” "Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn"
This is a classic distortion of Adam Smith, who believed that free trade was a menace and who said that government needed to limit the spread of the division of labor.
If you want a compromise between the two viewpoints, any economic system should strive to build more well rounded workers. This can subdue the the division of labor and give more meaning to output without sacrificing efficiency.
Marx wasnt weird, he was scatalogical and completely insane. Its amazing how almost all the most successful business owners I know came from nothing. Adam Smith was not radical. He just observed and helped define natural human economic behavior. Behavior that is central to all civilisations, since early man made a sharpened stick and traded it for a fish.
5:15: I wouldn't say that this is a point of contention between the two. Consider the fact that these two as previously mentioned did not live in the same time. During the time of Smith the capitalist infrastructure to control the masses hadn't been created; but during Marx's time it had. I'm not sure that it's reasonable to say that Smith wouldn't recognise the market capture that existed after the birth of capitalism, especially since he writes extensively on the problems of market capture. What made him think of capitalism itself was the first hand observation of its effects: smugglers evading the arbitrary laws set up by the police state.
It could be harmful as a part of the superstructure maintaining the base of society. (Divine right of kings in feudalism, opium of the people in capitalism.)
One could point out that government isn’t the only entity that can constrain a free market. Monopolies have no incentive to innovate and all the power to squash upstart competitors.
You said that you would never hear the idea that the government could make working/poor people freer from the likes of Smith, but he literally says that this is true over and over. “Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable” ALWAYS JUST AND EQUITABLE. If anything Marx is more anti-government than Smith. Read the primary texts.
THE most important distinction between these two is that Smith compared the yet unnamed, capitalism, with the rest of history and where we have been. Marx compares capitalism with Utopia. Essentially, Adam Smith was just a researcher. He did some philosophy, but not many people care about that so I guess that means he wasn't good at that. But that made his work more tied to reality Marx was a philosopher
This is completely false. Marx, alongside Durkheim and Weber, is considered a classic of sociology, and his studies on capitalism are still relevant. Marx was a philosopher, a journalist, a political economist and a social scientist, who conducted a very good research with his newly developed method. Smith was a pioneer and a precursor of Marx, but it is pretty hard to think he was "more tied to reality" than Marx.
@@teutonicterror0365 right. It would have been better for me to just compare The Wealth of Nations with Marx's manifesto instead of comparing the two men. Wealth was an observation based on what was working. The Manifesto observed some things, but it was mostly made predictions that have failed. It has valuable critiques of capitalism, but came up with nothing better.
Both were great intellectuals at their time and tried to find solutions for a broken system. Still, I am more inclined to Socialist Democratic ideals than Capitalist ones but humans should be open to learn and listen to all ideas. Thanks for the video! 👽♥️♥️♥️
Social democratic ideals are capitalist. Socialism transfers the ownership of the means of production to the hands of the workers, social democracy does not. It's pretty much capitalism with a few public services to make it more tolerable... Until it's rolled back. It's still an exploitative system for those who live under it. Not to mention others, typically from third world nations, on whose backs modern day social democracies live. If you're interested in Marxism and actual anti-capitalism I can direct you to a few channels.
1) I must demolish Smith by saying the obvious, THE FREE MARKET INEVITABLY LEADS TO EXTREME CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH BECAUSE IT ALWAYS BECOMES TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS PROBLEM DUE TO THE RELENTNESS PURSUIT OF PROFIT IN A FREE ACCESS ENVIRONMENT. (The free market ALWAYS concentrates Wealth, because it is a battlefield and also because competition is unsustainable). 2) I, also, must revise Marx to make him more useful by stating the obvious, We are free to look at the society and aggregate all employees into one Employee and all owners into one Owner. Ownership is a claim, not effort. The Owner makes the claim, then the Employee enters to protect and grow what has been claimed as owned by the Owner. All efforts are done by the aggregated Employee, the aggregated Owner just owns, nothing else, no effort what-so-ever. In short, The aggregated Employee invents and makes the products then sells the products to itself and then pays a fee called Profit to an 'Owner' for the permission to own the same products the aggregated Employee itself made and sold to itself. Ownership is not effort, it is a political claim. 3) Therefore, if the Owner does not make you poor then the free market will. Would you like to know the only correct solution or do you think you have one of your own?
@@lexpox329 Are you then implying that capitalism requires nations to exploit vulnerable people, and prevents the development of any other system that tries to steer away from exploitation?
BTW, I'm quoting from the video. Where would government get the resources that it is providing citizens? And if the citizen is no longer dependent on wage labor are they better off with dependence on government for their resources?
Smith based his ideas on human psychology or human nature. Marx didn't. That's why socialism (in any form) never worked long term and always needed totalitarian power to preserve it.
Read Adam Smith properly, slowly and closely. He was not an ius naturalist by any means, at least insofar as the wealth of nations is concerned....human nature...tu culo!
This is refreshing. I wouldn't say they're similar, but as a lefty I've known for a long time that if you argue for a straight Adam Smith recommended government, you will inevitably be called a Marxist. Even though they really mean socialist, which is funny enough. All the early capitalists make similar points: "we think this is the best way to distribute goods and services, which will inevitably require a countervailing force to curb rampant abuse and avoid the total destruction of civil society which a pure market economy would bring about. This is not an argument based on liberty: nobody has, for example, the right to own a utility." Paraphrased.
@@kenfresno5218 Or you know, the fact that the US healthcare market turned into a monopoly with essentially zero regulation, and as a result things like inculine are ten times the market price.
yes the US healthcare system is a monopoly only because of government regulations if the market was actually free like in Switzerland a nation that consistently ranks no.1 or 2 in human development index than prices would be way cheaper. the reason the the US healthcare system is so costly is not because the government lets it do whatever it wants but rather the opposite.
@@rappakalja5295 i agree but what you refer to as no regulation is actually regulation or laws passed by the industry to eliminate competition. the solution is to dissolve all regualtion protecting the medical industry starting with patents with a maximum lifespan of five years and allowing anybody to practice medicine regardless of ama license. That would bring back free market prices
I'm far more interested in Marx's social critiques of capitalism. They feel more real to people than thinking about some esoteric economy theory like "The labor theory of value".
You're right that they >feel< more real, but this is a big problem in the modern left. Although progress has been accomplished regarding social issues, less has been made towards inroads to fundamental power -- political, economic, and military capacity. Following revelations of internal failures in Soviet Russia, especially in relation to Stalin's administration, socialist theorists reoriented themselves towards the upper-middle class university students of the 60s onwards and away from the proletariat in an effort to achieve social change. This, evidently, has worked to some degree. But it hasn't prevented far right elements from entering or even holding power. The orientation away from economic analysis has also allowed capitalism to recuperate the aesthetics of underprivileged demographics. So modern liberal capitalism can present itself as "progressive" without any true danger to the status quo as discourse of fundamental power factors is pushed further to the sidelines. Rather than speaking of reorienting our policy and economy towards general equality and environmental sustainability, we discuss the social issues you prefer -- sometimes to the detriment of those very issues. The racial context of black US Americans is entirely different to that of the Kurds, yet the same theoretical framework is applied to each. And said framework is largely written by black Americans with black American interests in mind. In the same way, white, western women cannot represent the cultural preferences of women everywhere or what a different form of feminism may look like. Although the economic factors may be less obvious to the lay person, they are fundamentally influential to the betterment of all, and are less reliant on culturally specific factors or the preferences of a specific demographic. It's crucial for the left to gain meaningful power that can directly change lives rather than passing through the middleman of culture, as that opens progress to distortion by specific interests.
@@MadassAlex Here in lies the crux. It's very very different to persuade the vast majority of people with economic analysis. Your upper middle class uni students may be able to take their time and understand and parse out the nuance of economic theory, but most people frankly don't care. Hence social critiques are so useful. They hit people where they're at. Why shit is as bad as they are? It's because of class differences between the working and capital owning class. It's far easier for people to understand that workers work so capital owners can profit, hence we need more workers power if we want a better life. That way people are mobilized to take economic action. Now if u start droning about economic theories (frankly they're quite dull) you'll lose people really quickly.
@@justaguy6216 Your reference to dialectical materialism is already an economic theory, mind, so economic theory doesn't have to be dull. And just as importantly, socialist theorists of the latter 20th century (and even earlier, potentially) left behind the labour theory of value. So the economic theory side is wide open, just so long as it doesn't divide people into socio-economic classes. tl;dr Kropotkin was right but we also have better data in modernity.
@@justaguy6216 Centralised power is bad, even if that's a hypothetically democratic state. Bakunin made the same observation and both were proven right when the Soviet Union went sour.
Adam Smith wrote about capitalism before the industrial revolution. Therefore he saw a positive future. Karl Marks was born in that future after the industrial revolution. He saw that along with the positives, many negatives also came with the industrial revolution. So he wrote about a way out of the negative impacts of capitalism. In fact Adam Smith wrote about the ways out of Mercantilism. Before the industrial revolution, merchants believed in hoarding money. They didn’t care about the life of the workers or the conditions of the factory. This he labelled as Mercantilism. Adam Smith theorised that morality or the invisible hand could help in this. If a merchant allowed his morality to help make the conditions of the worker better then the efficiency of the worker would increase as a result the factory would produce more and better quality products making the merchant win the competition. Both in my opinion were against the domination of a merchant over the lives of the workers. Both wanted to improve the life of the worker. The worker was the protagonist in both of their theories.
Only a stupid can argue that Marx wouldn't write Das Capital now or his views would change. If you read 'The Communist Manifesto' it appears Marx almost forgets its 1847 not 2021! He's so accurate about his prophesies and analysis of Bourgeoise. Also that Marx considers the Middle Ages and it's feudal economy comparatively better than modern capitalism.
@@rappakalja5295 He wrote while living in the richest place on Earth, where 10 year olds would work 15 hours a day with toxic chemicals that make their bones melt, so not really, no. He wasn't talking about about 2020 Sweden; if you are, that's an interesting choice, though.
@@Ronni3no2 in 2023 all those 10y old children working 15h shifts with toxic chemicals are not in sweden, but in africa. go capitalism! havent changed a bit havent you my dear old enemy? 🤦♂
Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith has been in the public domain for some time and can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg and searched. The printed book can cost you $15 and take a lot of effort to search. Has Smith's "Invisible Hand" been used as a propaganda tool for decades since most people would never read WoN? Smith used the word 'invisible' six times but only once as "invisible hand". It is really curious that we hear about the 'invisible hand' so much. Smith used the word 'education' EIGHTY TIMES. We are not told about that. Search for "and account" and you will find multiple instances of "read, write, and account", not "read, write and arithmetic". Double entry accounting was more than 300 years old when Smith wrote Wealth of Nations, but 50% of Brits were illiterate and public schools did not exist in 1776. The United States could have made accounting/finance mandatory in the schools since Sputnik. Wouldn't that have helped everyone best serve their own self interest? But we do not hear the people who propagandize us about the "invisible hand" advocating mandatory accounting because that might make their invisible rip-offs more difficult. Adam Smith never used the word 'depreciation' in WoN. He mentioned paper money being depreciated one time. Marx wrote about 'depreciation' 35 times in Das Kapital, sometimes regarding the depreciation of machines and sometimes of money. Marx even mentioned Adam Smith 130 times though not much about education. Consumers did not buy automobiles, air conditioners, televisions and microwave ovens before 1885. Marx died in 1883. But it's OK! Our brilliant economists do not talk about the depreciation of under engineered consumer trash today either. Every time you buy a replacement the purchase is added to GDP. What about NDP? Oh sorry, when do you ever hear an economist explain NDP? That's OK too, they only depreciate the Capital Goods and ignore the depreciation of consumer junk anyway. Wealth of Nations has probably been in the public domain for a very long time but cheap computing did not make it available in Project Gutenberg until 3/17/2001. Milton Friedman died in 2006. Was Friedman giving us the straight dope on economics or treating us like a bunch of dopes for decades?
Capitalism, Communism, Socialism are all flawed in their own way. You could argue that capitalism exploits the working class, while the capitalists are not working themselves. (which makes you feel bad for the workers, because they do all the physical work while the capitalists don't) But how do you solve this problem? You might think Socialism or Communism? Well, people have to get payed for what they do and not by the amount of work that they perform. If the economy is equal, why would people lift heavy equipment or clean the toilets when they see other people having jobs that are not nearly as exhausting or shitty as theirs? Would you work as a hairdresser or a high risk job like emergency response, ie. firefighters if both jobs pay equally good and/or the economy is equal?
@@mathias3026 Notice that none of the believers in any of the ideologies advocate mandatory accounting/finance in the schools. Then economists do not talk about the depreciation of durable consumer goods that are designed to become obsolete.
@@mathias3026 i would work with heavy lifting and "boring labour jobs". you know there are people who do enjoy working with thier bodies? that argument is just BS. and the fact that no one would work under communism is also just dumb. ever tried to stay at home all day not doing anything? that shit is taxing on your mental health. people will still work. just because your basic needs are meet like shelter and food, youd still have to work prob to "buy" say a guitar and a camera and follow your passions. honestly I think those arguments are just not strong enough. and emergency room? ofc people will work with emergency response and hospitals!! that is very important job and even tho it can be tough and traumatising at worst people will want to do that. why are people already working as all of those in a capatalist society? emergency response and hospital jobs is not really a random job someone stuck in poverty can get lol. people dont work there for the salery. they work there because they want to save lives. idk where people get these arguments from. it makes 0 sense to me. but maybe because im one of those people who do like those "shitty" jobs everyone refers too :P
@@Pasta221 I understand. It was a bad example too by me. People like to do different things. But still, there is a problem with equal pay in society. There are different needs for different jobs. The work we have to get done and need the most, will and should get the best salary. The high salary also creates incentive for others to fill the need.
My problem with Marxism is it’s attempt to have society resemble a factory. Which eliminates innovation, especially if it’s novel. So anything outside this monstrosity of a factory at the very least looks toward farmers , proprietors and other non- factory mavericks with an eye of suspicion that will spin out of control. Very obstinate in its blood thirsty fervor. Adam Smith had stated profoundly, that “free markets require government oversight,” is the most overlooked idea he had. It seems at times that people confuse Smith with the Austrian school who refuse to let go of the gold standard and doesn’t actually work with fiat currencies.
"the opium of masses" didn't have a negative sense!, in the context, just say it's the way the proletarian alleviates the pains of exploitation, at the time, opium was legal and it did not have the social stigma it has today.
Your view about Marx's religion is not accurate! You should understand why He indeed said that religion it was the people's opion! If he was alive nowadays, he probably would say that the internet, Twitter and Facebook are the people's opion...
Its important to remember that Marx only experienced poverty because he was terrible with money and refused to work. He came from a rich family who got sick of sending him money, he wasn't born into poverty in any way.
He also was a major asshole to his family from the letters that were found. Also introverted. Which is why i laugh at him as he grew up rich and isolated talking about how people works
@@gigaguy1773 yeah from any biography of karl marx, its not hard at all to find. He couldn't even finish his 3 volume sleeping pill Engles had to do it for him, probably for the better since marx was such a shit writer.
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
I really liked the visual for the invisible hand of the free market
I must revise Smith by saying the obvious, THE FREE MARKET INEVITABLY LEADS TO EXTREME CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH BECAUSE IT ALWAYS BECOMES TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS PROBLEM DUE TO THE RELENTNESS PURSUIT OF PROFIT IN A FREE ACCESS ENVIRONMENT.
(The free market ALWAYS concentrates Wealth, because it is a battlefield and also because competition is unsustainable).
I, also, must revise Marx to make him more useful by stating the obvious, We are free to look at the society and aggregate all employees into one Employee and all owners into one Owner. Ownership is a claim, not effort. The Owner makes the claim, then the Employee enters to protect and grow what has been claimed as owned by the Owner. All efforts are done by the aggregated Employee, the aggregated Owner just owns, nothing else, no effort what-so-ever.
In short, The aggregated Employee invents and makes the products then sells the products to itself and then pays a fee called Profit to an 'Owner' for the permission to own the same products the aggregated Employee itself made and sold to itself.
Ownership is not effort, it is a political claim.
There are literally cult members out there that worship the "invisible hand" as the true hand of "god". They also believe themselves as "shepherds of man" and whoever has the most wealth is the most beloved by that same god.
This was spurned on by the history of kings, as well as the prosperity gospel bs.
The Oligarchy caught hold of that in the early robber baron years and it transmitted truly with believers in their children. Those children then went on to begin to destroy this nation and ally with Oligarchies around the world as they spread their virus. Now the Oligarchies of the world work together to thwart the people, even going so far as having a nation go to war against themselves so they can maneuver easier for opportunities to take more from the people, the favor is then returned. The cycle of abuse.
@@IGNEUS1607 lol you can think that, but you can look it all up yourself. Just the facts, no conspiracies.
For one you can at least start with the Business Coup of 1933. Look up all the prosperity style gospels and big tent revivals and start looking at all the actions these Oligarchs have taken in order to further this into reality.
Btw the "invisible hand" is a capitalism economic term, just in case you're unfamiliar.
@@justanotherdayinthelife9841 Bro I fully agree that capitalism sucks but your rhetorical style is really bad. Do less of the epic fantasy search thing, it's really unhinged out in the wild.
I own the media.. 😊
I'm kinda disappointed that you didn't point out that both Marx and Smith thought that landlords are parasites
BASED
And Churchill made a great speech on it too!
"but it's a real job" 🤣
It’s just that one wants to kill the landlord and the other (I assume) wants everyone to be a landlord with no customers.
Well no one’s perfect.
Adam Smith once considered becoming a priest during a time when every good Catholic boy considered becoming a priest and every good Catholic girl considered becoming a nun. Let us not forget that young Joseph Stalin lived in a monastery and studied to become a priest. The world was different then.
Most catholic boys give becoming a priest a thought
@Justice Burton 🚬 💨 you wanna hit?🤔
I think I’d love to be a priest. Fuck kids. Sounds like a life.
You're astute
Adam Smith was NOT a Catholic. He was a believer of the Church of Scotland. In fact, he was not a very religious person, although he did believe in an Almighty God.
Great video. So many people who haven’t read either tend to think of Smith as just “the capitalist guy” vs Marx as “the communist guy”
Marx is though, no use running about it.
@wokeemperor4345 Facism isn't the end state of capitalism, it's been rebuked many times. There is government intervention in it.
Food for reality.
@wokeemperor4345 50% state.
Controlled, guided and taxed.
Expected clueless answer.
@wokeemperor4345 By your logic, is Singapore facist?
Somehow, even if it was entertained it's still better than all communist countries combined throughout the years and even modern ones right?
Clueless response expecting.
@wokeemperor4345
Read it again.
It's clear.
Funny how Socialism is problems to many things, right at its core.
Clueless response expecting.
I've heard that Marx didn't necessarily see religion as harmful. When he said "religion is the opium of the people," he didn't necessarily mean that as bad thing, but saw religion as something to ease the pain of whatever emotional pain people might be experiencing.
In general, Marx made very few moral statements in his works. He explained how things worked, not how good or bad they were. He supported communism not because it was morally better than capitalism, but because he thought it was the logical outcome of society's current contradictions.
Yes, he doesn't, but Illiteracy and Red Scare make fool goes mad.
Thats fitting, opium was controversial back then but it was still something available to be taken and on of the best medical painkillers available
Considering Marx was in England and had chronic pain he probably was prescribed or self medicated with it to some degree, the comparison still isn't flattering but its potentially more nuanced and sympathetic
@@saberpat7 You are missing the point.
Smith points out the potential for alienation briefly in Wealth of Nations and especially in Theory of Moral Sentiments his other work which changes the tone of his more popular work
His Moral Sentiments boom procedes and gives context to The Wealth of Nations. Most things about tones are because I think pop understanding of the work and not the work itself.
I think this overstates Smith's aversion to governmental regulation. Smith, especially in Theory of Moral Sentiments, acknowledges that human nature is not entirely altruistic and that self-interest can sometimes lead to immoral actions. In such cases, the government should play a role in enforcing moral and ethical standards through laws and regulations. He was coming out of the era of mercantilism where govt regulation was way over the top. He was actually a pretty optimistic guy about human nature. I tend to think that is generally correct, but in a world of global, somewhat faceless, commerce it is a lot easier to not really understand the harms to which one (or a firm) might inadvertently or bureaucratically/automatically be contributing (e.g., selling fertilizer without thinking that it could be used for a bomb). As Primo Levi said, "Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions."
Yup. We had an entire revolution to free us from the diktat of people whose presence in office we had no control over.
Getting close to that situation again, by all the evidence.
Props for getting the definition correct on the invisible hand. It's not a market regulating force but a prosperity incentivizing one.
However, your portrayal of Smith as believing that positive freedom by state intervention did not exist is completely wrong. Smith explicitly stated that state intervention was necessary to ensure free markets by prohibiting conglomeration into monopolies and prohibiting economic rents (natural monopolies). These are clear examples of positive freedoms imposed by state action. Of course, you won't hear this from the likes of the Heritage Foundation.
At Smith's time, the market was already captured by an unholy alliance between the state (i.e. the monarchy) and big capital through the policy of mercantilism. Smith wanted the market to be free of this unholy alliance because he wanted this conspiracy to end. So he against state intervention and for free markets so that the market could be more competitive and not monopolized by the East India Company. At his time, free markets led to competitive markets. Today, the Heritage Foundation and its ilk invoke Smith to create free markets that lead to giant multinational corporations, something that Smith would have been dead against.
Very summary but very balanced comparison. I always appreciate it when you contrast the thoughts of the different philosophers that you talk about.
It's completely inaccurate to say that for Smith governments can only take away our freedom. The Wealth of Nations lays out very significant roles for government in creating the infrastructure necessary for markets to exist: not just physical infrastructure, but laws, regulations, and enforcement mechanisms.
Insane how much right wingers will cite adam smith despite the fact that he’d be disgusted by modern capitalism
because it's to restricted much by the government
Marx would be more disgusted by modern communism than Smith would be by modern capitalism. The simple truth is capitalism isn’t perfect, but it’s profoundly better than communism.
@@nickca6104 What modern communism? Communism has never happened; Socialism has, and I don't think Marx would be disgusted by it, considering it has fared much better than capitalism does.
@@nickca6104What is capitalism better than a stateless, moneyless, classless society?
@@brandonsaquariumsandterrar8985 How is it restricted by government?
smith cares about the bag. marx cares about the grind
Simplistic and pretty accurate but with nuance
Marx knows the bag could be bigger
@@alejandromarquez3526 Marx knows the bag is being stolen from
"Efficiency VS Meaning" Smith wasn't 100% pro-division of labor. He foresaw the concept alienation behind it that Marx later developped. He's known for the idea of division because historically he was one of the first advocates of it, not because he would be still one of the most fervent promoters of it today. He's way much moderate on this point than most economic students thinks.
Smith is several hundred years old and none of his works is considered true in the economics.
Do you understand it?
“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.” John Maynard Keynes
Good thing he was wrong.
What's nasty about wanting to survive and have enough resources to endure whatever hardships life throws at you? You can be a full blown supporter of socialism and realize that this quote, whether from Keynes or not, is extraordinarily stupid
@@Magic_M_Hayashi it's just a slogan that is easier to remember than taking time to understand the complexity of what it's referring to.
@@Magic_M_Hayashi I don't think the Keynes quote is talking about "wanting to survive."
Yeah, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are 'just surviving".
with regards to Smith's religious views its interesting to note that he was good friends with the philosopher David Hume, who was a religious skeptic
This was a cool video. I think the key criticism of Smith would be his flawed understanding of the power dynamic between rich and poor, and the key criticism of Marx would be his toxic philosophical presumptions that portray everyone as having equal wants and needs that can be rationally calculated, as well as the reduction of human motivation to acquisition and oppression.
He never said anything about a power dynamic between rich and poor but a history of class struggle. Nor did he say everyone had equal wants or needs. Nor did he say everything can be rationally calculated. He and Engels denounced lies and pseudoscience like Mathus and the doomsday nutcases like overpopulation crackpots. Today we have the irrational fear of nuclear power, climate change and fossil fuels being responsible for everything bad. Idiots who want planning to remain a corporate government secrets while talking about free markets being the solution to government planning.
Also don't forget that Smith's writings and professional journalistic work and Marx's writings and professional journalistic work are like 70 to 100 years apart.
Marx certainly didn't think government could bring freedom from poverty , Marx was for a stateless society
who owns means of production in stateless society?
@Don'tBeEvil the people own their own then, no one can take their value that way
@@wittttttt Since it doesn't exist no one, but the workers should own them, at least in Marxist thought.
@@dweee97 So I opened a bakery, invested $100k in it. It's the greatest in the area, people love my cakes. It grows, so I need to hire 3 workers to help me out. Now, according to Marx, these 3 guys have 75% of my business. How ridiculous, right? Moreover they change the recipe, to easier one, so that their job is easier. Cakes are not as good, so business goes down. These 3 dudes don't care, they quit and find a job in another bakery. It's easy for them. People in the area on the other hand lost a great bakery and I lost my $100k. Do you think I will risk opening another business? How long will i take that there will be no more bakeries in the area? This is utopian idea, that will never work in real life. Sorry
@@wittttttt according to marx, your 3 workers should: be paid what they bring to the table, have democratic control of their working conditions. Your point of them changing the type of cake is just dumb, them changing it will make them less money, as their labor will bring less use value. Also your point about you losing 100k is wrong as your paycheck will be equal to the use value you produce. So if your cakes are worth 100k you will get your 100k.
You do not say anything about the most important thing in Smith's and Marx's theories, i.e labour theory of value. According to Smith all value comes from workmen's labour. Capitalists and landlords take a part from worker's labour in form of rent and profit. Smith also mentions that profit of capitalists should not be confused with labour of supervision and organization. He claims that profit has nothing to do with that. Profit is proportional to capital invested not to the labour of supervision. And such labour very often perform with hired clerks who are paid salaries.
Marx takes that framework and expands it and calls it exploitation. But essentially they have the same view on the source of value, which is in labour but not in capital.
Smith says that? Huh, I didn't know that. Would you tell me the source/book where you found that? Thanks!
@@camaradamanuel5025 It is in Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations".
CHAPTER VI
Of the Component Parts of the
Price of Commodities
“The profits of stock, it may perhaps be thought are only a different
name for the wages of a particular sort of labour, the labour of inspec-
tion and direction. They are, however, altogether different, are regulated
by quite different principles, and bear no proportion to the quantity, the
hardship, or the ingenuity of this supposed labour of inspection and dir-
ection. They are regulated altogether by the value of the stock employed,
and are greater or smaller in proportion to the extent of this stock”
...
“In this state of things, the whole produce of labour does not always
belong to the labourer. He must in most cases share it with the owner of
the stock which employs him.”
...
CHAPTER VIII
G.ed.p82
Of the Wages of Labour
“In that original state of things, which precedes both the appropriation
of land and the accumulation of stock, the whole produce of labour belongs
to the labourer. He has neither landlord nor master to share with him.”
“But this original state of things, in which the labourer enjoyed the
whole produce of his own labour, could not last beyond the first introduc-
tion of the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock.”
“As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a
share of almost all the produce which the labourer can either raise, or
collect from it. His rent makes the first deduction from the produce of the
labour which is employed upon land.“
In the similar way stock owners demand their tribute from produce of labourer in the same way as landlords demand their rent. By fact of owning stuff they have to get a tribute (part of produce of laborer) (It is not a direct quote from Smith but it follows logically from his writings)
Adam Smith even wrote about class struggle in the same chapter:
“What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the
contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by
no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to
give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to
raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labour.
It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must,
upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force
the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in
number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes,
or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of
the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower
the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such
disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a
master manufacturer, a merchant, though they did not employ a single
workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they
have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could
subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long
run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to
him; but the necessity is not so immediate.
We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though
frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account,
that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject.
Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uni-
form combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate.
To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and
a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We sel-
dom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may
say, the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of. Masters, too,
sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour
even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence
and secrecy, till the moment of execution, and when the workmen yield, as
they sometimes do, without resistance, though severely felt by them, they
are never heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are fre-
quently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen; who
sometimes too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own
accord to raise the price of their labour. Their usual pretences are, some-
times the high price of provisions; sometimes the great profit which their
masters make by their work. But whether their combinations be offensive
or defensive, they are always abundantly heard of. In order to bring the
point to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loudest clam-
our, and sometimes to the most shocking violence and outrage. They are
desperate, and act with the folly and extravagance of desperate men, who
must either starve, or frighten their masters into an immediate compliance
with their demands. The masters upon these occasions are just as clamor-
ous upon the other side, and never cease to call aloud for the assistance of
the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have
been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants,
labourers, and journeymen. The workmen, accordingly, very seldom derive
any advantage from the violence of those tumultuous combinations, which,
partly from the interposition of the civil magistrate, partly from the neces-
sity superior steadiness of the masters, partly from the necessity which
the greater part of the workmen are under of submitting for the sake of
present subsistence, generally end in nothing, but the punishment or ruin
of the ringleaders.”
www.ibiblio.org/ml/libri/s/SmithA_WealthNations_p.pdf
agreed
Great video. In the past 11 minutes I gained a slightly more nuanced view of both Smith and Marx and I'm not even sure whether you have a preference for one or the other. You've done a great job creating an insightful yet balanced video.
He prefers Smith. Marx's view of the government is incredibly similar to Smith's.
Smith was a Presbyterian and his view of human nature and self interest was based on the concept of using what was intended for evil for good.
3:28 minor correction, the ruling class is always the class that controls the means of production, the bourgeoisie is the capitalist ruling class
Adam Smith and Marx actually had some opinions in common regarding the division of labor. Smith recognized the dehumanization inherent in reducing workers to being essentially cogs in an industrial process. He acknowledged the tedium and the lack of artistry and expression, but he had faith that workers who found those conditions disagreeable would use their freedom to choose more satisfying employment. He had too much faith in human goodness to predict what was obvious to Marx in hindsight. Speaking of being overly optimistic, are any of you living in cooperative communities under the sole governance of your own will and judgment like Marx predicted? of course...it could still happen.
marx wasn't the father of socialism since socialism itself predates marxism
marxism is but one variant of socialism, referring to a specific group dynamic, that of the industrial-economic group
Smith did discuss the concept of alienation through his observations on the first industrial revolution. Also, Smith had few data points to work on for a democracy or a republic at his time, and "freedom" involved lack of a ruler controlling things, not a government representing the people which Marx was being his ideas on.
Marx: Worker's should own the means of production
Also Marx: Workers who own their means of production are petty bourgeoisies and thus side with bourgeoisies instead of proletariats
Exger: Didn't read Marx and decides to comment regardless
@@missk1697 Marx himself coined the term petty bourgeoisie and even explained what it is. Modern examples of petty bourgeoisies are truck drivers who own their own trucks and everyone who is self-employed
Petty bourgeoisie = someone who has some degreee control and independence over his/her own labor. May also have access to property in some cases.
Bourgeoisie = someone who has control over other people's labour through wage labour in order to extract value from it in the form of surplus value, and does so through exerting total control over the means of production.
It's not so difficult to understand the difference between the two m8.
@@PRSRod Marx literally described petty bourgeoisies as self-employed artisans and small shopkeepers and always, not "may in some cases" owns their property. If you are self-employed, you don't have "some degree" of independency, you have full degree of independency. That is why Soviet Union cracked on small family farmers(kulaks) who only produced for themselves and meaby sold some to others
I don't disagree with that, however my point was that nowadays you don't necessarily have to own property to be able to work independently - freelance workers are the epitome of this, for instance. I think that the way in which one conceptualizes a given social class must have attention to the historical time of the object of analysis. In that sense, having direct control over one's own labour does not necessarily imply that you MUST be a property owner (and what counts as a mean of production I'd also say).
So you can either be oppressed by the government or you can be oppressed by the industrialist, or worse maybe the industrialist controls the government, and then you’re really in trouble.
I tend to prefer the Adam Smith style definition of freedom, because at least everybody in that instance is a private individual. The government can provide a hand out, but they hand out comes from the hard work and labor of somebody else, so there’s no such thing as the government actually taking care of us, just forcibly shifting resources around.
People acting in their own self interest, where individual greed is pitted against another individuals greed works incredibly well, right up until someone corners the market, and it is only at that point the government really needs to take a look and see if intervention is actually warranted.
For the most part, governments do so already for public infrastructure. It doesn't make much sense to build another power plant just to try to take market share of an existing market. Power plants and the associated power lines are expensive, and even the most expensive existing electricity sources will be cheaper than what you can offer on your own power grid, assuming all else like labor costs equal. This is why water lines are operated or contracted out by the government
Marx's view of freedom seems to imply that a prison inmate is free while a wild bird is not. The prisoner has state-provided essentials while the bird does not. Or am I misunderstanding?
Big misunderstanding. Marx didn't view freedom from a freedom to or a freedom from pov. Humans labor to survive and Capitalists exploit this need using wage labor. He believed labor should have meaning, as in people have hobbies and do things for their own benefit/fun with others. We are social animals and therefore the economy should reflect that.
Here from your post on reddit. So simple and clear. Thanks lots !
No economic theorist has taken into account the most important factor in economics:
Human psychology and irrational common behaviour en masse.
For this alone, there should be a merging of the fields of sociology, psychology and economics to fully understand the non-quantitative movements and consequences of macro-economic decisions.
"Socio-Psycho-Economics"
In what quantitative academic field can you find such a lack of consensus as you do in economics? That's because it's dogmatic ideology based on wishful thinking, drizzled with personal moral beliefs. And greed.
Bro you are extremely underrated...this was a very engaging presentation.
This is NOT how Smith uses "the invisible hand" though. You're right in saying that the notion of competition eventually incentivizing people to produce better is how we use Smith's invisible hand metaphor today; but that isn't how he meant it. Smith was talking about cross-border trade and its effects - namely the movement of capital away from England, the loss of domestic capital stock from offshoring and other unintended consequences to the public good.
Specifically, he was saying nationalist sentiment would prevent money from flowing overseas.
Marx understood capitalism much better than anyone else. His ideas of revolution and communism proved wrong.
Smith was just genius in his formulation of the "invisible hand". What today's "free-marketeers" are promoting is quite the opposite, they are favoring a class of rentier capitalists and monopolies, probably closer to the kind practiced by the East India Company or the Spanish Monopoly in America, which Smith fiercely criticized.
Marx had good analysis, but poor solutions
@@tabo01 Marx didn't really offer solutions, except that the workers of the world should unite. In other words, that the solution was political, not economic. The vague notion of "dictatorship of the proletariat" was drawn from the experiences of his time, the revolutions of 1848 and the Paris Commune. The Russian experience with the soviets in 1905 and 1917 seemed to follow that model and prove him right, but that was about it. The state of assembly and permanent debate (plus a good deal of violence) only lasts for the revolutionary period. Nothing was proposed about what should happen after that when everyone went back home. So the "dictatorship of the proletariat" ended up in the dictatorship of the Party. I don't know if Marx is to blame for that.
I must revise Smith by saying the obvious, THE FREE MARKET INEVITABLY LEADS TO EXTREME CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH BECAUSE IT ALWAYS BECOMES TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS PROBLEM DUE TO THE RELENTNESS PURSUIT OF PROFIT IN A FREE ACCESS ENVIRONMENT.
(The free market ALWAYS concentrates Wealth, because it is a battlefield and also because competition is unsustainable).
I, also, must revise Marx to make him more useful by stating the obvious, We are free to look at the society and aggregate all employees into one Employee and all owners into one Owner. Ownership is a claim, not effort. The Owner makes the claim, then the Employee enters to protect and grow what has been claimed as owned by the Owner. All efforts are done by the aggregated Employee, the aggregated Owner just owns, nothing else, no effort what-so-ever.
In short, The aggregated Employee invents and makes the products then sells the products to itself and then pays a fee called Profit to an 'Owner' for the permission to own the same products the aggregated Employee itself made and sold to itself.
Ownership is not effort, it is a political claim.
@@tabo01 Marx wasn't big on solutions though, moreso predictions of outcomes. He thought the workers would inevitably want democratic control themselves but he didn't have much in the way for how they'd go about it.
Which is why we need a government purging
Thanks!
Thank you!
Good point. Many people don't take into account the historical timeline of these two thinkers.
Economist (Smith) vs. Ideologist (Marx)
Summary: Smith is the primordial revolutionary.
Smith got it really wrong about the Wealth of Nations. His model sucks, because he wrongly assumes that Competition is eternal and sustainable. It is not. The market and trade are a battlefield where Profit is the only thing that matters to someone which ensures that ALL wealth concentrates in the hands of the 'ONE WHO MAKES THE POST PROFIT FOR THE LONGEST TIME POSSIBLE'.
EVENTUALLY, Everybody else is unable to present any realistic Competition that matters in terms of Smith's market theories.
@@reasonerenlightened2456Marx got it so much more wrong on the idea that value stems from labor; value is extremely subjective. people don’t want something because labor was put into it, people put labor into something because they want it. also in a real world socialist/communist society, the government becomes the ultimate monopoly; they hold all power
@@adg9042 In what sense "value stems from labor"?
1) Labor is required to add value? (fish in the river is less valuable than the same fish on the market)
2) Machines just copy value, without creating new value?
3) Is the hammer a creator of value or the person who uses it?
In reality , Value stems from the individual placing stuff in order of their importance for that individual. When two individuals meet and talk value then the price emerges based on how much leverage each individual has over the other.
Marx also never called himself a 'Marxist'? 'What IS this 'marxism'? I am Marx and I am not a Marxist' = his least quoted words.
Marx would never have blamed some particular guy of inventing capitalism, at least according to his ideology. He thought that this was a historically necessary and somewhat natural step in the evolution of a society.
Not even a bad thing, since a society otherwise would have got stuck with feudalism or something premodern, never becoming ready for socialism.
I wonder how many here really lived in a communist society. And what percentage still love communism after living in it for a few decades ?
I don't think the soviet union was even close to the socialism Marx envisioned and wrote about. In the Soviet Union, the means of production just moved into the hands of a political elite instead of an economic elite. The existence of the Soviet Union doesn't mean communism is impossible (though I don't think we'll get there in the near future). Even if you view Marx's socialism as a utopia, why wouldn't people wanna live in a utopia? Also, even if communism is impossible, the works of Marx have proven to be extremely useful when discussing ways to improve the capitalist system for the average person.
I don’t think the opium quote means what you described. It was my understanding that he accepted religion as a comfort for people.
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
It would be false to say that Smith would never conceive of "an interference from the government making people freer" (5:39). The Wealth of Nations is targeted at governmental interference via enforcing monopolies (which suppresses innovation and competition) and levying tariffs (which interferes with trade and also suppresses competition). But he's not by any means an anti-government ideologue, and in books IV and V of Wealth of Nations, he does espouse a positive role for government and taxation, including funding an equitable court system, building and maintaining infrastructure, and educating the youth.
Marx said the existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery. Marx wanted the workers of the world to unite and rule themselves, since the working class produced all wealth.
Lookup Works of Karl Marx, 1844. Critical Notes on the Article. The King of Prussia and Social Reform.
And how exactly does Marx suggest to resolve conflicts, especially the ones that keep re-emerging ?
working class produced all wealth. But without their boss, can they produce anything?
That statement seems to support a democratic form of government rather than an economic system. What all the modern day communists that I talk to don't seem to understand is that someone always has to be in charge and the person will get corrupted by the power. 2 million people can't all decide something together or their whole lives will be spent making decisions and nothing will get done. So they end up electing someone to represent them in a government of some kind, then the government officials start to make decisions that benefit them over the people as they get corrupted by power. But because its a totalitarian system, not based on freedom of the individual, none of the people can stand against the government and it devolves into slavery while pretending to be a "peoples republic". This is why the Western style democratic states with the freedom of speech and rights of the people against the government have succeeded, they haven't yet devolved into tyrannical governments ruled by dictators. They will eventually just like all countries have failed eventually. Communism, with its hatred of the individual, is fatally susceptible to devolving into dictatorship. Once that happens it doesn't matter what economic system is in place the country is going to fail.
Of course a centrally planned economy is also weaker than a free market. Humans can't predict the demand of goods and services very well without free market price information. Thus centrally planned economies suffer from a lack of information and over and under produce their goods in ways that bog down the economy (severe shortages in necessary things like food and energy). Free markets almost always over produce goods which allows the system to grow more smoothly without severe shortages. Both economies will probably get there eventually but the free market will get their first, thus always out competing a centrally planned economy.
As to the problems of free markets, humans will always seek advantage over each other, only a capitalist system directs some of that energy for the good of all. Bad actors and immoral behavior will have to be thwarted by the government when it pops up. Thus even a free market economy should be subject to a strong government so the capital owners can't get away with making themselves into oligarchs. The west currently suffers from oligarchs effectively manipulating the governmental systems to enacting regulations that don't hold back the oligarchs but in fact help solidify their power. Thus corruption is the biggest problem not capitalism, and the only way to stop corruption is through political reform from an educated electorate, the people need to rule themselves not these oligarchs. Hopefully this will happen in my lifetime and a renaissance of sane public policy will reform the west into countries for the people by the people.
An impossible goal, which is why it's so terrifying. Because the transition... will become the endgoal, as the endgoal can never happen due to human nature. So it'll always be in the 'transition' to communism, and thus any atrocity to reach such utopian endgoal will be justified as a necessary evil.
@@12nguyenphanminhkhoi90 all their boss does is take what they earn and give back a paltry sum. what you're thinking of is management, which would still be a thing under any form of socialism/communism
Also Smith and Marx had nearly 0 in common click bait
Essentially Marx did not disagree with free trade principles and based his economics on some of Smith's ideas which he called English economic principles. The question of religion at the end is truly irrelevant, I don't think Smith was an idealist, so it doesn't really matter.
It does. One thing hurt Marxism so much and failed in its sole materialist worldview.
I read Adam Smith's Wealth of the Nations from beginning to end, and it seems for me that the author of this film has not the done it. Summary of A Smith's work looks here like a repetition of usually quoted and best known extracts from the book though neglect much more of deeply thought content of the book. So I recommend reading the whole book with thought.
2:30. Actually Marx is not the "father" or even the inventor of Socialism. Socialism existed as an ideology long before. Marx and Engels often attacked this orginal form calling it "utipoian Socialism" versus their own "Scientific Socialism"(Marxism). They argued the orginal was never going to work, because it only focused on building small isolated rural communities while ignoring taking on the Capitalist owner class that would inevitably conspire to destoy it. That´s why Marxism emphasize the importance in the seizure of power by the workers aspect in all industrialized countires.
I would say the founder because he founded it and make it more clearer for us to understand
@@PolitictalDipsit No. Since that is not a definition of what a Founder is.
He invented Marxism. He do not get to define what Socialism is, since it was already invented before he was born.
@@TheLordRichard I thought a founder means an individual founded something not create. Then what is a founder?
@@PolitictalDipsit Well they are somewhat synonymous.
But founding is more used when describing creating organizations.
As in a person becomes a founder when he creates a company or political party/movement.
So Marx founded/created/invented Marxism and several theories that many Socialists/Communists believe in.
But Socialism is a way more broader Ideology than just Marxism.
And if you read his writings you would know how Marx criticized the strategies and end goals of many Socialist at the time and yes indirectly of most self-described Socialists today.
Smith said that a society cannot be healthy where most of the citizens are poor. So he did care about class struggle. In fact he wrote a lot on it. His conclusions were always rooted in harnessing human motivation where Carl Marx resented human motivation and sought to remove it through revolution, government intervention and redistribution. Which sounds a lot like murderous aristocratic theivery to me.
great video! I like the focus on the different using of the term freedom. Seems to me like Smith used it to describe negative freedom or, to be free from any ruling or constraining forces and Marx mostly used it to describe positive freedom or, to have the necessary means and ressources to be able to do something. Neither is inherently more right or wrong than the other, just like you said merely two very different takes on the same issue.
Smith was aware of the repetetive aspect of labour division and the degrading effects and he mentioned in his book!
No, Smith does not contradict Marx's commentary on division of labour. In wealth of Nations, Smith also makes the same kinds of arguments about the negatives of division of labour, and even implicitly argues that government intervention may be needed to counteract these negatives:
"In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging, and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any other employment than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilised society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it."
The quote comes from book 5.
Yes, indeed! Few people read Book 5!
@@hkumar7340 Think it's more accurate to say they willfully ignored it.
*Capitalistic freedom is the freedom to exploit the others.*
How are you exploiting them if they choose to buy your product.
@@johnirvine9942 it's about the workers. They are the ones who make everything flow and happen, yet they aren't compensated in whole for all of the labor that they do and have little to no say in their own working conditions, all for the sake of the capitalist's profit.
@@brandttrotter5600 okay but if there were no entrepreneurs who are able to take the risk and invest in some market what would the workers do? Im a leftist but you cant see things like that. We need rich people because the rich create jobs and wealth. Im im wrong please explain me why
@@anapereirinha8689 what would you consider a "leftist"
@@anapereirinha8689 Jobs are created by the demand and wealth is created by labor. Rich people do not create anything.. they only use their money to appropriate the wealth (profit) created by workers. One may say that rich people finance, organise and manage the production but it could be organised by the government and then managed by the workers instead. So now the wealth is not obtained by one single owner but instead all the profits are distributed between the workers and the government, which in its turn spends those money on social support of any kind (like free housing, free education and medical care, as well as building new factories, plants, companies etc. to provide jobs for the rest of the society)
you claim "interference from government is making us freer, which is something you'd never hear from smith". Here's a quote from wealth of nations to directly contradict you:
"Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters."
and for smith, this notion of equitability between the rights of capital and labour is a key parameter of what a free market means to him:
"THE whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labor and stock must, in the same neighborhood, be either perfectly equal, or continually tending to equality. If in the same neighborhood, there was any employment evidently either more or less advantageous than the rest, so many people would crowd into it in the one case, and so many would desert it in the other, that its advantages would soon return to the level of other employments."
by stock, he means capital. Smith writes at length about how european and british government interference are primarily used by the rich to give themselves the edge, and so distort this natural equilibrium between the advantages and disadvantages of labour and capital. That is why he writes that it is always just for the legislature to act to mitigate this.
Sorry, it's clear to me that you haven't properly read wealth of nations. So much more you say is very incorrect. Your video seems to be just based on a summary you've seen. Another point is that "invisible hand" only ever appears once in his wealth of nations really as just a throw away term he uses. He does not make an argument that self interest is good for the whole of society, he only argues that the self interest of those that live by wages is goods for society. For those who live by profits, smith says:
"His employers constitute the third order, that of those who live by profit. It is the stock that is employed for the sake of profit, which puts into motion the greater part of the useful labor of every society. The plans and projects of the employers of stock regulate and direct all the most important operations of labor, and profit is the end proposed by all those plans and projects. But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity, and fall with the declension, of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich, and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin. The interest of this third order, therefore, has not the same connection with the general interest of the society as that of the other two. Merchants and master manufacturers are, in this order, the two classes of people who commonly employ the largest capitals, and who by their wealth draw to themselves the greatest share of the public consideration. As during their whole lives they are engaged in plans and projects, they have frequently more acuteness of understanding than the greater part of country gentlemen. As their thoughts, however, are commonly exercised rather about the interest of their own particular branch of business, than about that of the society, their judgment, even when given with the greatest candor (which it has not been upon every occasion), is much more to be depended upon with regard to the former of those two objects, than with regard to the latter. Their superiority over the country gentleman is, not so much in their knowledge of the public interest, as in their having a better knowledge of their own interest than he has of his. It is by this superior knowledge of their own interest that they have frequently imposed upon his generosity, and persuaded him to give up both his own interest and that of the public, from a very simple but honest conviction, that their interest, and not his, was the interest of the public. The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."
No, Smith does not contradict Marx's commentary on division of labour. In wealth of Nations, Smith also makes the same kinds of arguments about the negatives of division of labour, and even implicitly argues that government intervention may be needed to counteract these negatives:
"In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging, and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any other employment than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilised society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it."
Isn't this the exact same as Marx's definition of class conflict.
@@zesky6654 Marx as heavily inspired by Smith. Like the youtuber says, they are more common than most people think, only he doesn't go far enough, and one of those people is him.
“The true rightist is not a man who wants to go back to this or that institution for the sake of a return; he wants first to find out what is eternally true, eternally valid, and then either to restore or reinstall it, regardless of whether it seems obsolete whether it is ancient, contemporary, or even without precedent, brand new, "ultramodern." Old truths can be rediscovered, entirely new ones found. The Man of the Right does not have a time-bound, but a sovereign mind.”
"Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn"
This is a classic distortion of Adam Smith, who believed that free trade was a menace and who said that government needed to limit the spread of the division of labor.
Explain yourself for saying "free trade was a menace"? I do not think you understand the core reasons, or do you?
@@reasonerenlightened2456 If you don't believe the OP then read Smith yourself.
@@ivandafoe5451 thats...not how that works
If you want a compromise between the two viewpoints, any economic system should strive to build more well rounded workers. This can subdue the the division of labor and give more meaning to output without sacrificing efficiency.
Are you planning on covering Progress & Poverty at any point?
Not at the moment, no
Do you mean progress and the eradication of poverty
@@jimgaston9863 No I was talking about the book by Henry George
@@ChapterbyChapter please do it's a book that includes ideas that socialists and hardcore capitalists agree on (the Land Value Tax)
Left eye ? Then why you cover right eye ?
Great video, as always! Also, that drawing of Adam Smith kinda looks like the actor John Lithgow.
Let us not forget Malthusianism we are living today. The idea we are over populated and the poor need to go
Smith invented capitalism?
?
???
No.
Marx wasnt weird, he was scatalogical and completely insane. Its amazing how almost all the most successful business owners I know came from nothing. Adam Smith was not radical. He just observed and helped define natural human economic behavior. Behavior that is central to all civilisations, since early man made a sharpened stick and traded it for a fish.
Beautiful Video! Good Job Mate!
Thanks a lot!
Adam Smith asked Karl Marx: "Are you Kurdish?"
Karl Marx did not answer...
That's awesome content!! Thanks from Brazil!! Keep on the good work!!
Before Marx popularized the term capitalism it was referred to as liberalism
What? Smith was definitely for government regulation Lol
5:15: I wouldn't say that this is a point of contention between the two. Consider the fact that these two as previously mentioned did not live in the same time. During the time of Smith the capitalist infrastructure to control the masses hadn't been created; but during Marx's time it had. I'm not sure that it's reasonable to say that Smith wouldn't recognise the market capture that existed after the birth of capitalism, especially since he writes extensively on the problems of market capture. What made him think of capitalism itself was the first hand observation of its effects: smugglers evading the arbitrary laws set up by the police state.
Great video!
Thx m8!
Did Smith wrote about being rich and investing money to become more rich, or just about free market and division of labour?
Do the work yourself...read.
@@ivandafoe5451 Wow -.-
Great work, keep it up!
Marx didn't see religion as "harmful" os as "something bad", he just did a materialist analysis of it, he doesn't make value judgements on this topic
It could be harmful as a part of the superstructure maintaining the base of society. (Divine right of kings in feudalism, opium of the people in capitalism.)
@@arthurmorgan1550 he said we need to take it less resiously
Very clear and concise. Danke!
nicely made video, good job
One could point out that government isn’t the only entity that can constrain a free market. Monopolies have no incentive to innovate and all the power to squash upstart competitors.
If you are alienated from your work, start a business and create your own product. Nobody is stopping you.
Except money
@@titovallandand luck...
Same logic as "if you're homeless, buy a house."
You said that you would never hear the idea that the government could make working/poor people freer from the likes of Smith, but he literally says that this is true over and over. “Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable” ALWAYS JUST AND EQUITABLE. If anything Marx is more anti-government than Smith. Read the primary texts.
THE most important distinction between these two is that Smith compared the yet unnamed, capitalism, with the rest of history and where we have been. Marx compares capitalism with Utopia.
Essentially, Adam Smith was just a researcher. He did some philosophy, but not many people care about that so I guess that means he wasn't good at that. But that made his work more tied to reality
Marx was a philosopher
And the problem is that people elevate marxs theories to the same status as like the theory of gravity or the theory of evolution.
Marx was anti utopian.
@@PowersOfDarkness no far from it...
I just dont think he realised how dystopian the process would be
This is completely false. Marx, alongside Durkheim and Weber, is considered a classic of sociology, and his studies on capitalism are still relevant.
Marx was a philosopher, a journalist, a political economist and a social scientist, who conducted a very good research with his newly developed method.
Smith was a pioneer and a precursor of Marx, but it is pretty hard to think he was "more tied to reality" than Marx.
@@teutonicterror0365 right. It would have been better for me to just compare The Wealth of Nations with Marx's manifesto instead of comparing the two men.
Wealth was an observation based on what was working. The Manifesto observed some things, but it was mostly made predictions that have failed. It has valuable critiques of capitalism, but came up with nothing better.
An interference from the government would be working against you, not interacting to help you. In no sense the same.
I'll admit this is pedantic, but
2:44 that's his right eye
Haha yes, I realized that a little late😄
Two other writers of economic issues that should be compared to Smith and Marx. The ideas of Tom Paine and Henry George.
Both were great intellectuals at their time and tried to find solutions for a broken system. Still, I am more inclined to Socialist Democratic ideals than Capitalist ones but humans should be open to learn and listen to all ideas.
Thanks for the video! 👽♥️♥️♥️
Social democratic ideals are capitalist. Socialism transfers the ownership of the means of production to the hands of the workers, social democracy does not. It's pretty much capitalism with a few public services to make it more tolerable... Until it's rolled back. It's still an exploitative system for those who live under it. Not to mention others, typically from third world nations, on whose backs modern day social democracies live.
If you're interested in Marxism and actual anti-capitalism I can direct you to a few channels.
@@tasfa10 exactly
1) I must demolish Smith by saying the obvious, THE FREE MARKET INEVITABLY LEADS TO EXTREME CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH BECAUSE IT ALWAYS BECOMES TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS PROBLEM DUE TO THE RELENTNESS PURSUIT OF PROFIT IN A FREE ACCESS ENVIRONMENT.
(The free market ALWAYS concentrates Wealth, because it is a battlefield and also because competition is unsustainable).
2) I, also, must revise Marx to make him more useful by stating the obvious, We are free to look at the society and aggregate all employees into one Employee and all owners into one Owner. Ownership is a claim, not effort. The Owner makes the claim, then the Employee enters to protect and grow what has been claimed as owned by the Owner. All efforts are done by the aggregated Employee, the aggregated Owner just owns, nothing else, no effort what-so-ever.
In short, The aggregated Employee invents and makes the products then sells the products to itself and then pays a fee called Profit to an 'Owner' for the permission to own the same products the aggregated Employee itself made and sold to itself.
Ownership is not effort, it is a political claim.
3) Therefore, if the Owner does not make you poor then the free market will.
Would you like to know the only correct solution or do you think you have one of your own?
@@tasfa10 and that is why social democracies have not collapsed, unlike all socialist countries ever.
@@lexpox329 Are you then implying that capitalism requires nations to exploit vulnerable people, and prevents the development of any other system that tries to steer away from exploitation?
You said he was cut over his left eye but put the bandage over his right eye.
I had to scroll down to find someone (you) who also noticed this. Well done.
@@jps0117 Shows how confused the Left and Right are. Can't advocate mandatory accounting in the schools 100 years after the Model-T Ford.
They both detailed the brutal authoritarian system of capitalism, but Marx was like "and that's a BAD thing"
The authoritarian system that lets you insult it on its own website…
"Brutal and authoritarian"
What till you hear about the USSR. Oh wait, that wasn't 'real socialism'
Did Marx say "government can thereby give us freedom by providing us the resources to end our dependence on wage labor"?
BTW, I'm quoting from the video.
Where would government get the resources that it is providing citizens? And if the citizen is no longer dependent on wage labor are they better off with dependence on government for their resources?
Smith based his ideas on human psychology or human nature. Marx didn't. That's why socialism (in any form) never worked long term and always needed totalitarian power to preserve it.
Read Adam Smith properly, slowly and closely. He was not an ius naturalist by any means, at least insofar as the wealth of nations is concerned....human nature...tu culo!
"hUmAn NaTuRe" is just a buzzword
People always use human nature to justify the status quo. Kings used to tell peasants that feudalism was the natural order of things.
This is refreshing. I wouldn't say they're similar, but as a lefty I've known for a long time that if you argue for a straight Adam Smith recommended government, you will inevitably be called a Marxist. Even though they really mean socialist, which is funny enough.
All the early capitalists make similar points: "we think this is the best way to distribute goods and services, which will inevitably require a countervailing force to curb rampant abuse and avoid the total destruction of civil society which a pure market economy would bring about. This is not an argument based on liberty: nobody has, for example, the right to own a utility."
Paraphrased.
Adam Smith wrote about licensure....which has given us overpriced medicine today for example.
@@kenfresno5218 Or you know, the fact that the US healthcare market turned into a monopoly with essentially zero regulation, and as a result things like inculine are ten times the market price.
@@kenfresno5218 performance & cost of US healthcare compared to universal systems is evidence of exactly the opposite
yes the US healthcare system is a monopoly only because of government regulations if the market was actually free like in Switzerland a nation that consistently ranks no.1 or 2 in human development index than prices would be way cheaper. the reason the the US healthcare system is so costly is not because the government lets it do whatever it wants but rather the opposite.
You can thank Syndicalism for that and not capitalism
@@rappakalja5295 i agree but what you refer to as no regulation is actually regulation or laws passed by the industry to eliminate competition. the solution is to dissolve all regualtion protecting the medical industry starting with patents with a maximum lifespan of five years and allowing anybody to practice medicine regardless of ama license. That would bring back free market prices
Interesting viewpoints! Thanks for sharing! :)
I'm far more interested in Marx's social critiques of capitalism. They feel more real to people than thinking about some esoteric economy theory like "The labor theory of value".
You're right that they >feel< more real, but this is a big problem in the modern left. Although progress has been accomplished regarding social issues, less has been made towards inroads to fundamental power -- political, economic, and military capacity.
Following revelations of internal failures in Soviet Russia, especially in relation to Stalin's administration, socialist theorists reoriented themselves towards the upper-middle class university students of the 60s onwards and away from the proletariat in an effort to achieve social change. This, evidently, has worked to some degree. But it hasn't prevented far right elements from entering or even holding power. The orientation away from economic analysis has also allowed capitalism to recuperate the aesthetics of underprivileged demographics.
So modern liberal capitalism can present itself as "progressive" without any true danger to the status quo as discourse of fundamental power factors is pushed further to the sidelines. Rather than speaking of reorienting our policy and economy towards general equality and environmental sustainability, we discuss the social issues you prefer -- sometimes to the detriment of those very issues. The racial context of black US Americans is entirely different to that of the Kurds, yet the same theoretical framework is applied to each. And said framework is largely written by black Americans with black American interests in mind. In the same way, white, western women cannot represent the cultural preferences of women everywhere or what a different form of feminism may look like.
Although the economic factors may be less obvious to the lay person, they are fundamentally influential to the betterment of all, and are less reliant on culturally specific factors or the preferences of a specific demographic. It's crucial for the left to gain meaningful power that can directly change lives rather than passing through the middleman of culture, as that opens progress to distortion by specific interests.
@@MadassAlex Here in lies the crux. It's very very different to persuade the vast majority of people with economic analysis.
Your upper middle class uni students may be able to take their time and understand and parse out the nuance of economic theory, but most people frankly don't care.
Hence social critiques are so useful. They hit people where they're at. Why shit is as bad as they are? It's because of class differences between the working and capital owning class. It's far easier for people to understand that workers work so capital owners can profit, hence we need more workers power if we want a better life. That way people are mobilized to take economic action.
Now if u start droning about economic theories (frankly they're quite dull) you'll lose people really quickly.
@@justaguy6216 Your reference to dialectical materialism is already an economic theory, mind, so economic theory doesn't have to be dull. And just as importantly, socialist theorists of the latter 20th century (and even earlier, potentially) left behind the labour theory of value. So the economic theory side is wide open, just so long as it doesn't divide people into socio-economic classes.
tl;dr Kropotkin was right but we also have better data in modernity.
@@MadassAlex What was Kropotkin right about?
@@justaguy6216 Centralised power is bad, even if that's a hypothetically democratic state. Bakunin made the same observation and both were proven right when the Soviet Union went sour.
Adam Smith wrote about capitalism before the industrial revolution. Therefore he saw a positive future. Karl Marks was born in that future after the industrial revolution. He saw that along with the positives, many negatives also came with the industrial revolution. So he wrote about a way out of the negative impacts of capitalism. In fact Adam Smith wrote about the ways out of Mercantilism. Before the industrial revolution, merchants believed in hoarding money. They didn’t care about the life of the workers or the conditions of the factory. This he labelled as Mercantilism. Adam Smith theorised that morality or the invisible hand could help in this. If a merchant allowed his morality to help make the conditions of the worker better then the efficiency of the worker would increase as a result the factory would produce more and better quality products making the merchant win the competition. Both in my opinion were against the domination of a merchant over the lives of the workers. Both wanted to improve the life of the worker. The worker was the protagonist in both of their theories.
Only a stupid can argue that Marx wouldn't write Das Capital now or his views would change. If you read 'The Communist Manifesto' it appears Marx almost forgets its 1847 not 2021! He's so accurate about his prophesies and analysis of Bourgeoise. Also that Marx considers the Middle Ages and it's feudal economy comparatively better than modern capitalism.
So then he's just wrong.
@@rappakalja5295 He wrote while living in the richest place on Earth, where 10 year olds would work 15 hours a day with toxic chemicals that make their bones melt, so not really, no. He wasn't talking about about 2020 Sweden; if you are, that's an interesting choice, though.
Except like... Half of his predictions turned out wrong. Lol
@@Ronni3no2 in 2023 all those 10y old children working 15h shifts with toxic chemicals are not in sweden, but in africa. go capitalism! havent changed a bit havent you my dear old enemy? 🤦♂
Correction: Smith did not like "Division of Labor".
1:36 you're a real cutie 😍
Gay
@@octoxicbeballin you're literally watching a video on a gay man (Adam Smith)
@@maidberry5129 there is no reasonable evidence that says so, also that comment was a year ago lmao
@@octoxicbeballin yeah that's because i made it up
Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith has been in the public domain for some time and can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg and searched. The printed book can cost you $15 and take a lot of effort to search. Has Smith's "Invisible Hand" been used as a propaganda tool for decades since most people would never read WoN?
Smith used the word 'invisible' six times but only once as "invisible hand". It is really curious that we hear about the 'invisible hand' so much.
Smith used the word 'education' EIGHTY TIMES. We are not told about that. Search for "and account" and you will find multiple instances of "read, write, and account", not "read, write and arithmetic". Double entry accounting was more than 300 years old when Smith wrote Wealth of Nations, but 50% of Brits were illiterate and public schools did not exist in 1776.
The United States could have made accounting/finance mandatory in the schools since Sputnik. Wouldn't that have helped everyone best serve their own self interest? But we do not hear the people who propagandize us about the "invisible hand" advocating mandatory accounting because that might make their invisible rip-offs more difficult.
Adam Smith never used the word 'depreciation' in WoN. He mentioned paper money being depreciated one time. Marx wrote about 'depreciation' 35 times in Das Kapital, sometimes regarding the depreciation of machines and sometimes of money. Marx even mentioned Adam Smith 130 times though not much about education.
Consumers did not buy automobiles, air conditioners, televisions and microwave ovens before 1885.
Marx died in 1883.
But it's OK! Our brilliant economists do not talk about the depreciation of under engineered consumer trash today either. Every time you buy a replacement the purchase is added to GDP. What about NDP? Oh sorry, when do you ever hear an economist explain NDP? That's OK too, they only depreciate the Capital Goods and ignore the depreciation of consumer junk anyway.
Wealth of Nations has probably been in the public domain for a very long time but cheap computing did not make it available in Project Gutenberg until 3/17/2001. Milton Friedman died in 2006. Was Friedman giving us the straight dope on economics or treating us like a bunch of dopes for decades?
Capitalism, Communism, Socialism are all flawed in their own way. You could argue that capitalism exploits the working class, while the capitalists are not working themselves. (which makes you feel bad for the workers, because they do all the physical work while the capitalists don't) But how do you solve this problem? You might think Socialism or Communism? Well, people have to get payed for what they do and not by the amount of work that they perform. If the economy is equal, why would people lift heavy equipment or clean the toilets when they see other people having jobs that are not nearly as exhausting or shitty as theirs? Would you work as a hairdresser or a high risk job like emergency response, ie. firefighters if both jobs pay equally good and/or the economy is equal?
@@mathias3026 Notice that none of the believers in any of the ideologies advocate mandatory accounting/finance in the schools. Then economists do not talk about the depreciation of durable consumer goods that are designed to become obsolete.
@@psikeyhackr6914 True
@@mathias3026 i would work with heavy lifting and "boring labour jobs". you know there are people who do enjoy working with thier bodies? that argument is just BS. and the fact that no one would work under communism is also just dumb. ever tried to stay at home all day not doing anything? that shit is taxing on your mental health. people will still work. just because your basic needs are meet like shelter and food, youd still have to work prob to "buy" say a guitar and a camera and follow your passions. honestly I think those arguments are just not strong enough. and emergency room? ofc people will work with emergency response and hospitals!! that is very important job and even tho it can be tough and traumatising at worst people will want to do that. why are people already working as all of those in a capatalist society? emergency response and hospital jobs is not really a random job someone stuck in poverty can get lol. people dont work there for the salery. they work there because they want to save lives. idk where people get these arguments from. it makes 0 sense to me. but maybe because im one of those people who do like those "shitty" jobs everyone refers too :P
@@Pasta221 I understand. It was a bad example too by me. People like to do different things. But still, there is a problem with equal pay in society. There are different needs for different jobs. The work we have to get done and need the most, will and should get the best salary. The high salary also creates incentive for others to fill the need.
My problem with Marxism is it’s attempt to have society resemble a factory. Which eliminates innovation, especially if it’s novel. So anything outside this monstrosity of a factory at the very least looks toward farmers , proprietors and other non- factory mavericks with an eye of suspicion that will spin out of control. Very obstinate in its blood thirsty fervor.
Adam Smith had stated profoundly, that “free markets require government oversight,” is the most overlooked idea he had. It seems at times that people confuse Smith with the Austrian school who refuse to let go of the gold standard and doesn’t actually work with fiat currencies.
"the opium of masses" didn't have a negative sense!, in the context, just say it's the way the proletarian alleviates the pains of exploitation, at the time, opium was legal and it did not have the social stigma it has today.
Your view about Marx's religion is not accurate! You should understand why He indeed said that religion it was the people's opion! If he was alive nowadays, he probably would say that the internet, Twitter and Facebook are the people's opion...
They actually depicted it very accurate
This is a poor Wikipedia style comparison... Clearly, you never read the works of either Smith or Marx.
Its important to remember that Marx only experienced poverty because he was terrible with money and refused to work. He came from a rich family who got sick of sending him money, he wasn't born into poverty in any way.
lmao "he refused to work" the guy was a journalist, and his intellectual work was financed by Engels. Where did you get this information from?
He also was a major asshole to his family from the letters that were found. Also introverted. Which is why i laugh at him as he grew up rich and isolated talking about how people works
@@gigaguy1773 yeah from any biography of karl marx, its not hard at all to find. He couldn't even finish his 3 volume sleeping pill Engles had to do it for him, probably for the better since marx was such a shit writer.