Hum-06 and NS-06
Jambo
Responseone_two_Three_HUM_06.docxResponse one: HUM-06
I have gathered that Adam Smith’s contemporaries accepted slavery as a given and offered little sympathy toward the institution. Adam Smith, however, offered great insight into the construct of slavery. His “invisible hand” theory is the belief that capitalism, which began by trading and bartering systems, works out on its own without government interference. Human nature guides it. In Book III, Chapter I of The Wealth of Nations, Smith states, “That order of things … is in every particular country promoted by the natural inclinations of man.” This is all fine and dandy until one considers how slavery factors in. Adam Smith is clear. Slavery enabled the white man to rise in stature and wealth. With this wealth came ownership of more slaves. This caused the social gap to widen between the white man and black man as slaves were inevitably treated worse as the white slave owner got richer. Smith surmised that free labor would prove to be a better option.
I gained much from reading Spencer Pack’s article, Slavery, Adam Smith’s Economic Vision and the Invisible Hand. Smith saw the immorality of slavery and observed how the “invisible hand” “increased the misery for the poor free citizens as well as for the slaves themselves.” These poor free citizens had no way of moving forward and obtaining jobs because the slaves did all the work. If slavery fed the rich white man, why would the consequential wealthy class have any need to offer work to anyone else who needed it? This “invisible hand” pushed the white man upward while degrading poor men and slaves more and more. Smith hated slavery, but saw no way of abolishing it except to plead his case.
Smith’s Lectures on Jurisprudence offer more concerning his thoughts on slavery. In them he expresses his theory on man’s “love of domination.” It is for this reason that human nature would never be able to end slavery all together. Pack, and Daniel Luban in his article Adam Smith on Vanity, Domination, and History, both refer to Smith’s “deep pessimism” regarding the abolition of slavery. In Lectures on Jurisprudence, Smith states, “this love of domination and tyrannizing, I say, will make it impossible for the slaves in a free country to recover their liberty.” I think about the aftermath of the Civil War. Slavery was abolished, but black men were not truly free. They remained under the hand of the white man. As we progress, we are still faced with ugly racism perpetually nourished by the residual effects of the institution of slavery.
Response two: HUM-06
I read Adam Smith, I began to really think how in our society, do we not use others for our own personal gain? We trade with others to gain something that we cannot create or do ourselves. Humans tend to focus on their advantages and profit from those advantages because of specialized workers or products made by different men.
In Book I, Chapter 2, Adam Smith describes man’s interactions and reasons for labor. Adam Smith concludes labor ignites capitalistic ideas due to man’s preoccupation with fulfilling self-interest. Man, uses trade and a barter system to achieve his goal and will dedicate his life to do so because it is in his self-interest.
Smith says self-interest generates labor force and revenue.
“He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and shew them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages” (Smith, I, Ch.2).
In other words, man, needs more than one thing or item to survive. Due to needing specialized workers and labor forces, man’s self-interest generates the evolution of capitalism. Men, use other men or people to their advantage. The more someone is willing to pay for an item; the more labor, the more products made. I think back to the slave trade. The more slaves needed meant more labor, the more labor needed meant more trade and profit. The owners reaped the advantages, not the slaves.
Self-interest became the root words for labor and capitalism. Labor and capitalism gain wealth for men and the more specialized a society becomes. Capitalism determines the strength or weakness of a society depending on which side one may support. If you are a business owner, I would imagine you support capitalism., if you are the laborer, not as much because you are not profiting as much as the owners of the products. In the end, self-interest for Adam Smith meant that labor was the key to opening the door for capitalism which led to the development of wealth for most men.
Works Cited
Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Trans. Colin Muir and David Widger. Gutenberg, 2013. 10 September 2017. <An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Response three: HUM-06
One of the most impressive aspects of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is the wide scope of its content. The sections of the book that are most commonly discussed and celebrated are those discussing economics and which deal with the laws of supply and demand, natural price versus market price, and the various detrimental effects of regulating markets. However, Wealth of Nations is also chock-full of history, sociology, and philosophy. For instance, in Book one, Smith discusses the history of the advent of money. In Book three, he lays out a sociological theory in which he traces the progress of civilizations through four distinct stages (hunters, shepherds, agricultural, and commercial). And, in Book five, he follows in the footsteps of philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau by discussing the responsibilities that the sovereign has to the people (it is important to remember however, that Smith roundly rejects the idea of a “social contract”).
It is book five that I personally found most interesting. In book five, Smith identifies three key responsibilities of the sovereign; national defense, the dispensation of justice, and the creation and maintenance of public works and institutions. Of these three responsibilities, the first is found in the social contract theories of all three aforementioned philosophers. The second responsibility is fundamental in Locke and Rousseau’s theories, but the third seems to me to go above and beyond Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Of public institutions established by the sovereign, Smith says, “After the public institutions and public works necessary for the defence of the society, and for the administration of justice…the other works and institutions of this kind are chiefly those for facilitating the commerce of the society, and those for promoting the instruction of the people” (5.3). Because Adam Smith is specifically expounding on the requirements of a “commercial society”, it is not surprising that he includes the facilitation of commerce as a major duty of the sovereign. Smith speaks of the necessity for well-kept roads, canals, turnpikes, and the need to build forts and create ambassadorships to facilitate foreign trade. What is perhaps more surprising is Smith’s inclusion of both child and adult education. The beginning of book one of Wealth of Nations is primarily devoted to Smith’s ideas on the advantages that come with the division of labor and the development of specialization. If one were to read this section alone, one might get the impression that Smith thought of the specialization of labor as the sole concern when considering the ways in which a society might improve the circumstances of individual laborers. However, his insistence on the need for widespread education demonstrates that he is not concerned merely with the individual’s value as a specialized laborer, but also with the individual’s entire social, intellectual, and spiritual life. Smith says:
The man whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too 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 this 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 forming any judgment concerning many of the ordinary duties of private life (5.2).
