When Adam Smith went to Oxford he left after 6 months because he considered it totally useless and was convinced that the professorial clique that taught at it were incompetent. When Bertrand Russell attended Cambridge he wrote that the Cambridge dons served no useful purpose whatsoever, that he learned absolutely nothing from his teachers. Thus, we must not assume that attendance at the two most celebrated universities in the world means anything at all. For example, how can a buffoon like Johnson graduate from such an elite university? Well, you simply don't fail the offspring of the rich and great whom you rely on for finance and patronage, do you?
Johnson is credited with having studied the classics. which means that he would have no introduction to political economy. However, despite what is supposed to be the study of Mediterranean Roman and Greek history and philosophy, it is quite obvious that he was never introduced to the Sophist Thrasymachus, who tells us that justice is the interests of the strongest, in other words, that the law serves the elite and punishes the weak and the poor, although I suspect that if Johnson was to read that, he would argue that this was exactly as it should be in a well-ordered society. Johnson's latest foray into the wisdom of modern Britain is to declare that inequality is essential to fostering "the spirit of envy" and hailed greed as a "valuable spur to economic activity". Thus, for the Johnson's of the world, the fundamentals of economic growth and prosperity are founded on envy and greed. This is a brilliant metaphor for neoliberalism, and, as I have noted in recent posts, has no basis in economic theory, but is an essential element in the psychopathic philosophy of Objectivism as outlined by Ayn Rand.
Inequality is inevitable in human society as people all have different talents and attributes, but what Johnson is speaking of is economic inequality, an artificial as opposed to a natural inequality. So, let us look at what Adam Smith says is the valuable spur to economic activity in The Wealth of Nations Book 1 ch8.
Servants, labourers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part, can never be regarded as any inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged....
The liberal reward of labour, as it encourages the propagation, so it increases the industry of the common people. The wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the labourer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days, perhaps, in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious, than where they are low Bk1 ch8
Thus, what we find in the father of modern economic theory is that it is not inequality that is necessary, but equity. Now, equity is not equality, it is fairness. Smith does not advocate minimum wages, but 'a plentiful subsistence.' It is high wages 'the liberal reward of labour' that will drive economic activity and growth, not the promotion of greed. This brings us to the subject of greed which I will deal with in another post as this one is getting to its maximum length. Britain is entering a dangerous phase in its history because it is being increasingly led by economic illiterates and quasi-fascists. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
No comments:
Post a Comment