Adam Smith and Karl Marx: Apologists for the Empire's "Globalization"
The 19th Century was dominated by a battle between the supporters of the American System, on one side, and the British Empire, on the other. During the middle of the century, the circles around American economist, Henry Carey, fought for a series of projects to develop Asia, centered around railroads, as is described in the recent EIR cover-story, "The 'land-bridge': Henry Carey's global development program.''
Had the Carey circles grand design not been sabotaged by the British Empire, all of Asia would have developed as dramatically as Japan, which escaped the control of the British, and formed an alliance with the Carey circles during the Meiji Restoration.
The science of economics, as embodied in the American System, was founded by Leibniz. The modern embodiment of this science, is found in the works of Lyndon LaRouche such as, So You Wish to Learn All About Economics: Successful human survival is guaranteed only when society organizes successive creative breakthroughs in science and technology, which are then applied economically, to increasing man's power over nature, resulting in increases in the relative potential population density.
A successful society is characterized by a rising living standard for its population, increasing investment in factories and basic infrastructure, and the generation of additional surplus, which is invested in generating new discoveries in science and technology.
The British system denied any role for human creativity, and instead argued, that if man merely followed his hedonistic desires, pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, objective laws would naturally guide society to achieve the best allocation of wealth. Bernard de Mandeville stated explicitly in his Fable of the Bees, that men, in following their hedonistic desires, even in pursuit of evil ends, would ensure the best result for society.
Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, followed this belief, that human behavior was best ordered by each man following his hedonistic desires to their lawful conclusion. He argued that opium was a legitimate product, the same as any other commodity, that the objective laws of the "invisible hand'' must be allowed to determine all economic activity, and anything which stood in the way, such as national governments, were an obstacle which must be removed.
Smith, a propagandist for British colonialism, argued that human progress was advanced with the spread of this "free market'' globally, through the expansion of the British Empire.
A similar defense of British colonialism was also advanced by Karl Marx. Marx has an undeserved reputation as an opponent of British imperialism, because his writings were designed to appeal to, and manipulate people, based on their grievances. Marx emigrated from Germany to England at age 30, where he became a dupe of British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston.
Palmerston dominated the British government from 1830 to 1865, and, was the central figure in efforts to make the British Empire into a new Roman Empire. He directed British strategy in the Opium Wars. He also kept a stable of radicals and terrorists for purposes of destabilizing other nations. (Eleven countries have recently denounced the British government for harboring terrorists, demonstrating that the British have continued this practice to this day.)
In Marx's early writings, he adopted Aristotle's definition of man as "a political animal,'' even using the ancient Greek term, used by Aristotle. Consequently, he rejected the conception that man advances society through creative discovery, and instead argued that society advanced according to mechanistic laws through a natural progression, from ancient society, to feudalism, to capitalism, to socialism, to communism. Marx called Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, "an immense step forward'' because it reduced the value of all economic activity to the value placed on it, by the universal free market.
Marx attacked Carey's program for national economic development as a regression from Adam Smith. He rejected Henry Carey's attack on "the diabolical influence of England on the world-market,'' by claiming that it was simply, "the natural laws of capitalist production,'' and attacked Carey's plans for an alliance with Russia to defeat the British Empire by labeling him a "Russophile.''
[ 本帖最後由 dulp 於 2009-6-13 22:32 編輯 ] |
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