Has anyone on Holla Forums read The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith? Any criticisms of it? Any compliments for it?

Has anyone on Holla Forums read The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith? Any criticisms of it? Any compliments for it?

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Holla Forums would rather read Mein Kampf than Wealth of Nations at this point tbh

but didn't adam smith influence marx in some of his writings ????????

I have comments on it.
Morons on both the left and right seem to think it is in some way pro capitalism.
It is simply an older, shittier analysis of capitalism that was rightfully replaced by Ricardo's, whose was then replaced by Marx's.
Wealth of Nations has been used to justify neoliberal economic policies and the neoclassical schools, but even during his time, Adam Smith bemoaned shit like that, and complained when people misapplied his writing.

Yeah, Marx based most of his work off the work of classical economists like Smith and Ricardo.

Why? I would actually read Smith unlike that trash.

is that true?


I was hinting towards our tardiness in converting the latest batch of nazbol

What's a good paper of Ricardo's to read? I downloaded his essay on corn laws and I intend to read it but I want something more general.

Read Smith, through Marx.


It's true, but "based on" doesn't mean inspired by. Remember, a bulk of what Marx and Engels wrote are dissections of existing economics. We tend to think of Marx as someone who built on Hegel, but Marx actually ripped Hegel to shreds most of the time he wrote about him. It's not too dissimilar with Smith and Ricardo. He doesn't spare them as frequently as he would Hegel, but he gives them credit where it's due and moves on because that is the tenant of dialectical materialism. In short, it would be impossible for Marx or anyone to dissect capitalism to the degree that Marx did without fully understanding Smith.

Thankfully, Marx was thorough enough in his critiques of Smith that he covers more or less everything important you could learn from reading Smith on his own.

Smith may have been a proto-commie.

...

Let me just stop you right there since you're clearly new here, Holla Forums doesn't read anything, they larp and pretend to be intellectuals whilst never opening a book in their lives

Unironically /ourguy/

Smith was /ourguy/ tbh, like all classical liberals.

While he added to society by warming people up to the idea of beneficial trade and specialization of labor, he was in an economy operating at a pre-industrial level, and was limited by being a product of his time. Labor could go from making string to making cheese without real difficulty. It also would've been easier to have thousands of firms producing similar products, for similar prices. This would've been just as effective at the time, but larger companies tend to be more productive in the industrial-post industrial era because they have the capital to spend on better equipment. Not every worker can supply their own industrial equipment.
Marx made a similar mistake in assuming the factory work of his own era was less skilled and more automated than it really was, tbh. His call of class revolution would make more sense in a dystopian slave economy, where the machines require no skill to operate or fix.

read the first 3 chapters, it's pretty interesting and I could already tell it's not at all like what Mises & co make of it


retard

``On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation`` seems to be his most general writing, his ``Wealth of Nations`` or ``Capital``, though nowhere near the level of Marx and Engel's Analysis tbh.

That second imageā€¦
YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP

reality hurts capitalists. but it's true the "Father of Capitalism" hated Capitalism.

you are retarded, Smith didn't hate capitalism and neither did Marx

There was never a society based on barter, barter was always for strangers. Crock of shit. Funny thing a devout Christian came up with the invisible hand (God).

Read graeber

You must be new here

I'm not brave enough to actually try to read the original nearly 1000 page book, but I've read the first chapter of this condensed version:
static1.squarespace.com/static/56eddde762cd9413e151ac92/t/56fbaba840261dc6fac3ceb6/1459334065124/Condensed_Wealth_of_Nations_ASI.pdf
My main thought at this point is that it's interesting how prices affect behavior. When there's a lot of demand for something and not much supply of something, it prompts people to produce more of that thing because they know they can make a profit, and conversely, if there's too much of something but not enough demand, people will stop making so much of that thing. This seems to be the killer feature of market economies. I'm curious how people here respond to this. How does Holla Forums solve the Socialist Calculation Problem?

Read Cockshott

When did capitalism begin? Who was the first capitalist?

Did Smith call it capitalism?