> On Tue, 17 Aug 2010, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> Check out the full context. Smith was offering an explicit class
>> analysis. Capitalists care about maximizing profits, often at the
>> expense of the mass of a society.
>
> It's true. But the first irony is that Smith is doing it in this chapter
> in favor of the land-owning class. He argues that, unlike with
> capitalists, their class interest does coincide with the public interest,
> because the level of rents rises in line with a rise in the general wealth
> of the nation. Therefore they are the proper governing class -- just as
> they happen to be in England in 1776.
And he also says that the general interest coincides with that of the working class, too:
*** The interest of the second order, that of those who live by wages, is as strictly connected with the interest of the society as that of the first [i.e., landlords, those who live off rent]. The wages of the labourer, it has already been shewn, are never so high as when the demand for labour is continually rising, or when the quantity employed is every year increasing considerably. When this real wealth of the society becomes stationary, his wages are soon reduced to what is barely enough to enable him to bring up a family, or to continue the race of labourers. When the society declines, they fall even below this. ***
Emma Rothschild (I think, this is from memory) says in her book that the reason conservatives didn't like The Wealth of Nations when it was published was that it was reasonably clear that, for Smith, the wealth of nations was embodied in working class wages and living standards, rather than in fine art or colonial plunder.
Incidentally, the reason Smith gives that the workers shouldn't themselves be the ruling class is this (just a couple of sentences later):
*** But though the interest of the labourer is strictly connected with that of the society, he is incapable either of comprehending that interest, or of understanding its connection with his own. His condition leaves him no time to receive the necessary information, and his education and habits are commonly such as to render him unfit to judge even though he was fully informed. In the publick deliberations, therefore, his voice is little heard and less regarded, except upon some particular occasions, when his clamour is animated, set on, and supported by his employers, not for his, but their own particular purposes. ***
In Book V of WN, Smith defends universal, public education, which is specifically intended not to make workers better suited to their work, but to make workers better fitted to enjoy, especially, cultural life outside the workplace. And it's not crazy, I think, to think that if workers were so educated, they would be more "fit to judge" and better "informed" about public affairs, and so Smith's objections to working-class rule would be correspondingly weakened.
Chris