Adam Smith’s book The Wealth of Nations is treated, by conservatives, with the reverence Marxists offer Das Kapital.
Both are books of political philosophy. Both are also wrong.
Smith’s mistake is the most important one today. He believed that prosperity would naturally incline the wealthy toward the common good. This is true, for some. For Bill Gates, wealth is a responsibility, as it was for John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. It’s a tool to be deployed toward the good of all.
But that’s not true for all wealthy people, especially in technology. As a political force, wealth has generally been deployed on behalf of more wealth for the wealthy. In our time this has created a self-perpetuating economic elite, where heirs have greater fortunes than the men who made them, and greater political power to pile ever higher on their own children and grandchildren, while billions remain Les Miserables,
For capitalism to resemble a moral force, this needs to change. It needs to become as easy for people to fall as to rise. Right now, rising to wealth is a long, long shot, and wealthy wastrel bros go on-and-on. Having power invested in people with no interest in the common good isn’t democracy, it’s feudalism.
The Trump years made this clear. Money can’t be our god, an end unto itself. That’s what Adam Smith believed. Adam Smith was no Marxist.
The philosophy now animating the American right has nothing in common with Smith. They’re heirs to Friedrich Nietzsche, a colossal horse’s ass who died of syphilis and was interested only in himself.
If I have any philosophy (and I'm not a philosopher), then Ich bin ein Berliner. Isaiah Berlin’s takes on “value philosophy,” the idea that there are equally-valid values in eternal conflict, is something like the jelly doughnut beloved of Germans.
That’s why capitalism, democracy, and liberty must all be upheld for society to prosper. When only one dominates, society is diminished. It’s no accident that the King of Saudi Arabia and China’s “Communist” leaders are such ardent capitalists.
