> "Power and riches appear then to be, what they are, enormous and
> operose machines contrived to produce a few trifling
> conveniencies to the body, consisting of springs the most nice
> and delicate, which must be kept in order with the most anxious
> attention, and which in spite of all our care are ready every
> moment to burst into pieces, and to crush in their ruins their
> unfortunate possessor. They are immense fabrics, which it
> requires the labour of a life to raise, which threaten every
> moment to overwhelm the person that dwells in them, and which
> while they stand, though they may save him from some smaller
> inconveniencies, can protect him from none of the severer
> inclemencies of the season. They keep off the summer shower, not
> the winter storm, but leave him always as much, and sometimes
> more exposed than before, to anxiety, to fear, and to sorrow; to
> diseases, to danger, and to death."
As he does elsewhere, Smith here makes the capitalist "passions" - the pursuit of "power and riches" - "stupid", i.e. irrational. He rationalizes what is irrational for the individual by conceiving it as the working of "the invisible hand", the "cunning of reason" of God's providence.
This is a key aspect of what Keynes called "the wisdom of Adam Smith", one of "permanent truths of great significance" embodied in "the classical teaching" to which Keynes points in the passage Brad de Long quoted some time ago.
"I find myself moved, not for the first time, to remind contemporary economists that the classical teaching embodied some permanent truths of great significance, which we are liable to-day to overlook because we associate them with other doctrines which we cannot now accept without much qualification. There are in these matters deep undercurrents at work, natural forces, one can call them, or even the invisible hand, which are operating towards equilibrium." (Keynes, Collected Writings, vol. XXVII, p. 444)
Smith's conception of the capitalist "passions" has also been sublated by Marx. Marx's appropriation includes the results of the sublations by Kant and Hegel.
"The means which nature employs to bring about the development of innate capacities is that of antagonism within society, in so far as this antagonism becomes in the long run the cause of a law-governed social order. By antagonism, I mean in this context the unsocial sociability of men, that is, their tendency to come together in society, coupled, however, with a continual resistance which constantly threatens to break this society up. This propensity is obviously rooted in human nature. Man has an inclination to live in society, since he feels in this state more like a man, that is, he feels able to develop his natural capacities. But he also has a great tendency to live as an individual, to isolate himself, since he also encounters in himself the unsocial characteristic of wanting to direct everything in accordance with his own ideas. He therefore expects resistance all around, just as he knows of himself that he is in turn inclined to offer resistance to others. It is this very resistance which awakens all man's powers and induces him to overcome his tendency to laziness. Through the desire for honour, power or property, it drives him to seek status among his fellows, whom he cannot bear yet cannot bear to leave. Then the first true steps are taken from barbarism to culture, which in fact consists in the social worthiness of man. All man's talents are now gradually developed, his taste cultivated, and by a continued process of enlightenment, a beginning is made towards establishing a way of thinking which can with time transform the primitive natural capacity for moral discrimination into definite practical principles; and thus a pathologically enforced social union is transformed into a moral whole. Without these asocial qualities (far from admirable in themselves) which cause the resistance inevitably encountered by each individual as he furthers his self-seeking pretensions, man would live an Arcadian, pastoral existence of perfect concord, self-sufficiency and mutual love. But all human talents would remain hidden for ever in a dormant state, and men, as good-natured as the sheep they tended, would scarcely render their existence more valuable that of their animals. The end for which they were created, their rational nature, would be an unfilled void. Nature should thus be thanked for fostering social incompatibility, enviously competitive vanity, and insatiable desires for possession or even power. Without these desires, all man's excellent natural capacities would never be roused to develop. Man wishes concord, but nature, knowing better what is good for his species, wishes discord. man wishes to live comfortably and pleasantly, but nature intends that he should abandon idleness and inactive self-sufficiency and plunge instead into labour an hardships, so that he may by his own adroitness find means of liberating himself from them in turn. The natural impulses which make this possible, the sources of the very unsociableness and continual resistance which cause so many evils, at the same time encourage man towards new exertions of his powers and thus towards further development of his natural capacities. They would thus seem to indicate the design of a wise creator - not, as it might seem, the hand of a malicious spirit who had meddled in the creator's glorious work or spoiled it out of envy." (Kant, ³An Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose² in Kant's Political Writings, ed. H.S. Reiss, pp. 44-5)
Ted -- Ted Winslow E-MAIL: WINSLOW at YORKU.CA Division of Social Science VOICE: (416) 736-5054 York University FAX: (416) 736-5615 4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario CANADA M3J 1P3