Left wing propaganda

ZombieFleshEaters666,

i agree with you to some degree, but disagree with you about certain things. yeah, you can read liberalism into adam smith's views, but it was classical liberalism. not something that translates directly into what is considered left wing today.

adam smith did advocate for govt divesting itself from direct influence on the economy, but this can also be read as indirectly advocating imperialism. both great britain and france became the world's leading economic powers of the time while their economies were under the strong and direct influence of govt. if direct govt influence leads to the most economically and militarily powerful nations the world has ever seen, it makes complete sense as one of these imperial nations to tell other nations that they should refrain from direct govt influence of the economy. it's like saying, "ok, we're the world's most powerful nation, but don't follow and use the techniques and policies we used to get here".

understanding this also makes it easier to understand why the concept of comparative advantage in international trade is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated in history. britain had always outlawed manufacturing in the american colonies by decree. they didn't want manufacturing to develop in the american colonies because american colonial manufacturing would directly compete with the manufacturing industry in the british mother country. so of course adam smith in the 'wealth of nations' said that the american colonies should stick to merely growing or extracting the rude produce of the land and leave the manufacturing to britain. he said it would be more "efficient" this way. but as everyone should know, the definition of a colony is a country that merely produces the raw materials needed as inputs into the industry of the mother country. colonies, by definition, don't manufacture. so it makes sense that adam smith would tell the american colonies not to try to steer their economies into manufacturing.

i also disagree with how you've described mercantilism. mercantilism was an inductive-based economic view that used benchmarking for its economic methodology. and what mercantilist methodology led to was the understanding that manufacturing creates by far more wealth than the exclusive production of raw materials. this is something that adam smith completely ignored. all the classical economists used straw man arguments against mercantilism rather than honestly portraying mercantilism for what it was. both britain and france used mercantilist policies to become the most powerful nations in the world. so it makes complete sense that britain--through the works of adam smith and other classical economists, most significantly david ricardo--would discourage the rest of the world from using the same mercantilist policies they used.

adam smith did this in part by changing the popular methodology used in studying economics from an inductive-based methodology to a deductive or "a priori" methodology. instead of using real world examples for economic understanding, adam smith switched to deduction-based first principles such as the laws of supply and demand.

certainly, the laws of supply and demand have their place in economics, but by using adam smith's methodology, people lost the mercantilist understanding that manufacturing is a better economic activity to engage in than exclusive raw material production. which is how adam smith--with a straight face--could say that if britain concentrated their resources on manufacturing and the american colonies concentrated their resources on the production of raw materials, britain could trade manufactured goods for american raw materials and they would both benefit through "greater efficiency". nevermind that this was merely justifying colonialism by saying that it was "more efficient".






"The only place to spit in a rich man's house is in his face."
--Diogenes of Sinope