I can't help feeling that those who pan Wealth of Nations as an apology for exploitation simply haven't read it. That?s simply not what the book is about. For if you really do care about the underpriveleged masses -- and it's imminently clear that he really does -- then you better consciously organize your state in such a manner that money will flow naturally where it's most needed.
I'd been told before I read it by several people that AS was, for example, apologizing for the East India Trading Company? Does his apology for EIT include the lengthy chapter which discuss in full detail how and why the East India Trading Company was responsible for an wide array of abuses in the Far East, and why no similar company would be legal if a society were fully moral and knew its own best interest?
Nor is it a blind apology for laissez faire economics, though it does recommend non-intervention by the government insofar as that is possible. Still he fully recognizes the need for social services, rightly understood and rightly executed.
In fact, I can't see how anyone who reads it could view it as an apology at all -- it's simply a statement of fact. Adam Smith is not the one carrying an ideology around on his shoulder. You may not like it that the world works this way -- that's another matter. But that IS the way it works... you are made to see that for yourself. It is not imposed on you as dogma.
And after reading AS, I'm left feeling very happy that that's the way the world works.
I think the most fundamental idea I am left with after reading all those pages, is that wealth is a verb, not a noun. Land and labor (i.e. food and farming) are the bottom line of economics. Treat your farmers well. Unjust practices in trading will ultimately backfire.
The dynamo which runs the machine that creates wealth lies within each individual - it is the individual?s will to better his or her condition. To the degree that this aspect of human nature is given the power to express itself , the nation will be vitalized internally.
The fact is, those who most earnestly revere Adam Smith are not always those who have read his works most carefully. Which is why reading The Wealth of Nations is important for those who think about the role of capitalism and free markets in our nations and in our world.
Under Smith's point of view scarcity and poverty are historical and social problems, and their solutions are in history and in social interaction too.There are not worlds beyond every-day reality, as socialists made us to believe some time ago...just trade and division of labour and accumulation of capital, and so on. Let history and people surprise us. They will make the wealth, not the governments. The Smith system is open to history and change, and learnship, and only requires good foundations to secure an historical outcome of wealth.
The world of today has institutions that were not in XVIIIth century: global financial institutions and spread trade agreements, that create barriers at some places and open gates at anothers. And now we have new constraints (the environment,..) and new key players (global corporations, ..). But this new scene only makes smaller the room of economic policy choices for latin american governments. At the core of the room which is remaining for them, the Smith's suggestions still have urgent and actual importance.
Sad thing to recognize that in XXIst century latin america, we need to read a great book from XVIIIst century to find out solutions.
