ADAM SMITH-250 YEARS ON

that June 1973 should mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of Adam Smith, one of the greatest of all 18th century thinkers and one of the founders of the science of For Smith, above all in his famous 'Wealth of Nations' (1776), did much to uncover the laws of capitalist economy, those same laws which today are tearing it asunder and provoking world-wide economic and political breakdown.

Adam Smith, who was Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow, and later travelled widely throughout Europe where he met many time, will always be remembered as among the first to attumpt a systematic analysis finite laws. of the emerging capitalist This analysis was summed up in his concept of the 'hidden hand'. Capitalism, said Smith, was ruled, not by man's intention, but by the objective laws of the market. The task of political economy was therefore to uncover these laws and to analyse to what extent they assisted or hindered the production of wealth. 'It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love... conception of capit: objective system, o This basically materialist approach to politici al economy found its reflection in Smith's treatment of the la' w of value. He came to the conclusion (though he was by • no means consistent) that thi e exchange value of commor dities was determined by the labour-time involved in their production. A definite law, tl he law of value, regulated tl he process of labour under car pitalism.

Smith's great ad ivance was that when consideri ing "labour' he was interested not in the particular (concrete e) type of labour involved, bu it in labour in general (abstrai ct labour). This was no accide: nt. Like all new ideas, this • concept of social changes taking place in —he wished, that is, to identify the 18th century. all those whose labour was Capitalism was emerging as unproductive. a new social system, a process He showed that only those seen nowhere more clearly than whose labour, exchanging in Glasgow where Smith did directly against capital, promuch of his work. The par- duces a surplus, were engaged ticular labour of pre-industrial in productive labour. capitalism was being smashed He was thus able to show up as production for the that whole sections of society market, commodity produc- -the Church, Monarchy, tion, achieved a position of landed aristocracy, etc. were dominance. economic parasites. Like the But Adam Smith will also school of political economy to always be remembered as which he belonged, Smith was among the first to investigate showing that all these instituproperly the relation between tions-hangovers from the past productive and unproductive -constituted a definite barrier labour. Here again he was deal- to the expansion of the new ing with directly political capitalist system. questions. It was not surprising that In the 'Wealth of Nations' a group of writers, represented he set himself the task of later by the Rev Thomas exposing all those activities Malthus, developed theories directed against Smith which tried to show that capitalism was impossible and tried also to 'justify' the high spending of the rich aristocracy on the grounds that this spending provided employment for others. Marx condemned Malthus as a 'bought advocate' and "shameless sycophant' of the ruling class.

Political economy as a science dealing with the 'wealth of nations' was born in the period of capitalism's early development as a new mode of production which in the 50 years after Smith's death (1790) was to dominate the whole of Britain and soon the world.

Because of this, Smith (and later David Ricardo who carried forward his work) was able to analyse economic conditions in a highly-objective manner. The rising, powerful and confident capitalist class could afford to look at social and economic relations 'as they really were' as they struggled to remove all barriers to the development of capital.

By the 1830s and 1840s things had changed radically. Now the working class had emerged as a powerful, increasingly conscious class ranged against capital. Capitalism, as the 'Communist Manifesto' said in its famous phrase, had produced 'its own gravedigger'.

Now the capitalist class was able no longer to analyse the capitalist system in anything approaching an objective manner. To do so would have been to point to its central contradiction: the conflict between the working class and the capitalist class.

After 1830 political economy as a science was destroyed. It was replaced by apologetic 'theories' which attempted to justify capitalism as the best and most rational system and preached 'harmony' where 'conflict' existed.

It was left to Marx to take up where political economy had left off and go beyond it. He was among the greatest of Adam Smith's admirers, although fully aware of the severe limitations of his work. His basic weakness was that he had tended, while analysing capitalism, to look upon it as eternal.

In 'Capital' Marx proved that this is not the case. Capitalism, like all previous stages of society (slavery, feudalism etc.), was progressive only for a certain period of its history. After a certain point it would no longer be able to carry forward man's struggle against nature, теflected in the growth of the productive forces.

Capital would become a giant fetter to the expansion of these forces, a fetter which the working class would have to remove in establishing socialism, Capitalism is now in greatest-ever crisis.

It long since ceased to be in any sense 'progressive'; it faces mankind only with the prospect of another world war, lascism and Slump.

As Adam Smith's method did so much to establish, this 'crisis' is not an 'accident'. It will not go away! It reflects the laws of capitalist developBut the ca pitalists can neither understal id nor control this crisis. Only Marx and the movement he founded can grasp its real nature and implications.

Adam Smith's 'hidden hand' is now strangling the entire development of the productive forces, including the working class.

This working class, led by the revolutionary party, now has the great historical task of breaking the grip of this hand, of putting an end to the capitalist anarchy which its continued existence involves, and establishing economic system which is consciously regulated for the benefit of humanity.

It is in this spirit that, in June 1973, we recall the birth of Adam Smith!

PAGE Press, Thursday June BOOK REVIEW, PART 'The General Strike, May 1926.' By Christopher Farman. Rupert Hart-Davis. £3.50.

In the 1926 General Strike, with millions of workers actively engaged in a fight, and with the trade union and Labour leaders adopting a role of active obstruction and frightened ineffectiveness, the possibilities of building an alternative revolutionary leadership in the working class were opened up.

This process did not develop very far, for reasons which Farman only does a little to illuminate. The policy of enconraging illusions in the left Council through the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee was the essential perspective which the degenerating Communist International gave to the small group of revolutionaries in Britain.

It is true that before the strike itself, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) often secured the formation of councils of action and, in few cases, of workers' defence corps. However, there was no political perspective given to these organizational successes. So, as the Party later admitted, their slogans were 'essentially defensive' and it was only after the Strike was well under way that they began to call for the nationalization of the coal industry and the resignation of the Tory government.

Party members simply acted as super-militants doing nothing to heighten or develop the struggle. As Farman correctly puts it: 'During the initiative sign of revolutionary period the strike lasted there Thus Page Arnot, who was 1973 FO ON MH 3298 ALCS Poblisbed by His Majesty's Stationy such forms as the adoption of 'No time to be spent tonight