Adam Smith | Aberrant Monism
Category Archives: Adam Smith	July 6, 2010	Adam Smith, Deleuze, and Compositionalism
By Jeffrey Bell	Adam Smith is often held up as the darling and founding father of neoclassical economic theory, and by extension neoliberal attitudes towards the market, Smith does indeed question the effectiveness of state intervention within the market. Beginning with the premise that ‘No regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any society beyond what its capital can maintain,’ (Wealth of Nations, p. 453). Smith will conclude that ‘trade which, without force or constraint, is naturally and regularly carried on between any two places, is always advantageous, though not always equally so, to both.’ (ibid. p. 489). Rather than regulate markets, one ought instead to allow the ‘invisible hand’ of market dynamics to operate, for by virtue of this invisible hand ends may be promoted that were not part of the intentions of the market participants. In the Theory of Moral Sentiments, for example, Smith argues that since the rich ‘consume little more than the poor’ of the bounty produced from their land, a bounty produced ‘by their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements,’ rather than let it go to waste. Consequently, as Smith concludes, the rich ‘are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life which would have been made had the earth been divided into equal portions…[thereby] advanc[ing] the interest of the society…’ (Theory of Moral Sentiments, pp. 264-5). For Smith, therefore, it would seem that it is the market that maintains, by an invisible hand, its own self-sufficiency and autonomy, and it is the state that undermines this autonomy when it forces markets to comply with its own demands.
Leave a comment	| posted in Adam Smith, Compositionalism, Deleuze, Economy	Recent Posts	Foucault and Wittgenstein
Adam Smith | Aberrant Monism
Category Archives: Adam Smith	July 6, 2010	Adam Smith, Deleuze, and Compositionalism
By Jeffrey Bell	Adam Smith is often held up as the darling and founding father of neoclassical economic theory, and by extension neoliberal attitudes towards the market, Smith does indeed question the effectiveness of state intervention within the market. Beginning with the premise that ‘No regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any society beyond what its capital can maintain,’ (Wealth of Nations, p. 453). Smith will conclude that ‘trade which, without force or constraint, is naturally and regularly carried on between any two places, is always advantageous, though not always equally so, to both.’ (ibid. p. 489). Rather than regulate markets, one ought instead to allow the ‘invisible hand’ of market dynamics to operate, for by virtue of this invisible hand ends may be promoted that were not part of the intentions of the market part
icipants. In the Theory of Moral Sentiments, for example, Smith argues that since the rich ‘consume little more than the poor’ of the bounty produced from their land, a bounty produced ‘by their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements,’ rather than let it go to waste. Consequently, as Smith concludes, the rich ‘are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life which would have been made had the earth been divided into equal portions…[thereby] advanc[ing] the interest of the society…’ (Theory of Moral Sentiments, pp. 264-5). For Smith, therefore, it would seem that it is the market that maintains, by an invisible hand, its own self-sufficiency and autonomy, and it is the state that undermines this autonomy when it forces markets to comply with its own demands.
Leave a comment	| posted in Adam Smith, Compositionalism, Deleuze, Economy	Recent Posts	Foucault and Wittgenstein