Kindle Notes & Highlights
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June 3 - October 26, 2025
Smith was primarily interested in creating a theory in which the role of class conflict could be obscured by a fable of harmonies. As a result, The Wealth of Nations emerged as an epic poem of a strange world where “things are in the saddle and ride mankind” (Emerson 1940).
Smith appeared oblivious to the possibility that such economies of scale could set off a cumulative process in which the manufacturing prowess of the industrial economy becomes increasingly entrenched. Smith’s silence in this regard is surprising. After all, his close friend, David Hume, had engaged in a strong debate with Josiah Tucker, who had maintained that such trade would allow Britain to develop an insurmountable industrial lead (Hudson 1992, 69 ff.). Hume responded that cheap wages would permit the less advanced economies to converge with the more advanced.
Steuart as well as Tucker maintained that the less developed economies would be left in a state of permanent backwardness if they left their fate to the market.
Alex de Tocqueville (1848, 551–53) observed a similar phenomenon during his sojourn in the United States: Agriculture is perhaps, of all the useful arts, the one which improves most slowly in democratic nations…. To cultivate the ground promises an almost certain reward … but a slow one. In that way you only grow rich by little and with toil. Agriculture only suits the wealthy, who already have a great superfluity, or the poor, who only want to live…. [T]he great fortunes … are almost always of commercial origin.
England developed its strong industrial base precisely because it was so successful in carrying out the process of primitive accumulation. With so many people left dependent on the market for their basic needs, British industry had a far greater mass market at hand than any other country. This advantage was crucial for the success of the Industrial Revolution in England.
the key to economic growth in the colonies was the combination of unfree labor together with the advantages of a vast array of natural resources obtained through primitive accumulation on a continental scale.
To see these inconsistencies in Smith’s life does not prove that he was attempting to deceive his readers. As Peter Berger (1963, 109), a student of such mentality, has observed: “Deliberate deception requires a degree of psychological self-control that few people are capable of…. It is much easier to deceive oneself.”
No man acquainted with political and commercial history can doubt [that] Manufactures are founded in poverty. It is the multitude of poor without land in a country, and who must work for others at low wages or starve, that enables undertakers to carry on a manufacture, and afford it cheap enough to prevent the importation of the same kind from abroad, and to bear the expense of its exportation.
In short, Franklin generally took the position that the colonies would have to remain agrarian until the time would arrive when the crush of population became too great to allow the common worker to become an independent farmer.
Franklin generally expressed a fondness for the values of the Native American (see, for example, ibid., 148–57), which contrasted sharply with his impatience with any white who would not labor diligently. He explained the happiness of the Native Americans by their few natural wants, which were easily supplied; whereas, the civilized community had “infinite Artificial wants, no less craving than those of Nature, and much more difficult to satisfy”
And why was profit necessary? Bellers (ibid., 177) answered simply, “Because the rich have no other way of living but by the labour of others.”
“if machinery could do all the work that labour now does, there would be no demand for labour” (Ricardo 1951–73, 8:399–400). Under this assumption, “Nobody would be entitled to consume who was not a capitalist, and who could not buy or rent a machine”
Although the farmer’s Janus-like appearance—half-capitalist, half-worker—frequently is seen as inconsistent with capitalist development, in fact, this arrangement is quite efficient in providing cheap food and raw materials. The government allows this system of petty producers to feel a constant level of stress to spur them on. At the same time, the government provides a certain degree of protection to this seemingly archaic system of production, knowing full well that agriculture organized on a more strictly capitalist basis could prove to be substantially more costly.
“Happiness is the object to be desired, and we cannot be quite sure that provided he is equally well fed, a man might not be happier in the enjoyment of the luxury of idleness, than in the enjoyment of a neat cottage, and good clothes. And after all we do not know if these would fall to his share. His labour might only increase the enjoyments of his employer” (Ricardo 1951–73, 7:184; emphasis added).
Ireland, classical political economy confronted a people not yet subdued by capital. Recall Smith’s concern about the want of order in Ireland. Rather than recognize this resistance to capital as a normal reaction to highly exploitative conditions, early economists were prone to attribute it to a racial defect.
England appeared to have reached the point at which it could rely on “silent compulsion,” which becomes effective only after the “advance of capitalist production develops a working class which by education, tradition and habit looks upon the requirements of that mode of production as self-evident natural laws”
luxuries become attractive only when they are bought with the labor of others.
capital would submit itself to the rules of the marketplace only after labor had been made to submit itself to capital.
Given the alternative of producing for itself, the peasant household displayed a marked aversion toward wage labor. The household members valued their chance to avoid exchanging many hours of labor for the equivalent of the value of fewer hours. Moreover, even when wage labor offered pecuniary advantages, workers still frequently chose the independence of a less regimented life
So constantly has it occurred that it may be said it has invariably happened, that the former artisans, in giving up their tools, have never become the owners of the machines which have succeeded them. These Machines … come to be owned by a distinct class. The operative has no property share in the industrial operation, he owns nothing but his hands and the art of using them fitly. For opportunity to use them, and for pay for their use, he depends on the owner of the machine.
primitive accumulation was a crucial force in the process of capitalist development—not just during a precapitalist past or even some imagined moment when feudal society suddenly became capitalist. Rather, primitive accumulation played a continuing role as part of capitalist development.
The classical political economists took a keen interest in promoting primitive accumulation as a means of fostering capitalist development, but then concealed that part of their vision in writing about economic theory.
