Karl Marx or Adam Smith?

[Drooper]

Right, I am going to introduce a debate I was having on another forum.

Which of these two in your opinion has been more influential in history?

The political movement partially inspired by Marx was very high profile, revolutionary (by definition I suppose), and had some very destruvite effects in terms of dramatically curtailed wealth, welfare and freedom. The underlying theory underpinning Marx is now widely discredited.

From the origins of Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith influence has ben far mor gradual and subtle. For work that is hundreds of years old a remarkable amount of it is still relevant and fresh and used for the better in public policy to this day. From the thinking encouraged by Smith, much of the world has become wealthier, enjoy a higher standard of welfare and enjoy so many freedoms that are taken for granted.

Place you vote and drop your comments. Remember this is about there influence in history, not whether you agree or identify with one moe than the other.

 

[Shane Costello]

It depends on what you mean by influence. Marx was influential insofar as he founded a creed responsible for the deaths of tens, if not hundreds of millions of people, and the virtual enslavement of just as many more.

I agree that Adam Smith's influence has been overwhelmiongly beneficial, if somewhat understated. It's interesting that much of what he said is as relevant now as it was two centuries ago. Most recently I've seen him been quoted in terms of the debate into University funding in the UK. Nevertheless he doesn't hold the preeminent position in free market economics that Marx does in terms of communism.

On the balance, I'd plump for Marx, simply because IMO the malign influence he has ultimately been responsible for outweighs the more subtle benign influence of Smith.

 

[Ove]

Trying to answer your question with a counter question: Who is/was Adam Smith?

 

[Drooper]

Trying to answer your question with a counter question: Who is/was Adam Smith?

That is part of the question. Do you have to be well known to be influential? Would you judge Uri Geller more influential than Richard Feynman?

The reponse you are likely to get from the average punter in the street is: "Who was Richard Feynman?"

 

[BillyTK]

The underlying theory underpinning Marx is now widely discredited.

Gotta disagree with you on this one. Subsequent interpretations of his praxis (plan of action) definitely are discredited, but his original research and analysis isn't.

But I gotta say, that guy Adam's stuff is subtler, and after reading a critique of his philosophy, is probably closer to Marx than the free market stuff he's always being linked to.

 

[Drooper]

Re: Re: Karl Marx or Adam Smith?

Gotta disagree with you on this one. Subsequent interpretations of his praxis (plan of action) definitely are discredited, but his original research and analysis isn't.

But I gotta say, that guy Adam's stuff is subtler, and after reading a critique of his philosophy, is probably closer to Marx than the free market stuff he's always being linked to.

Sorry?

I was under he impression that Marx believed that individual agents left their own self serving devices would invariably lead to adverse outcomes.

Whereas Smith observed that individual agents left to their own self serving devices would lead to favourable outcomes.

Smith observed how resources will tend find their most efficient use without central control. Marx believed the opposite.

I don't think it is particularly close.

 

[BillyTK]

Re: Re: Re: Karl Marx or Adam Smith?

Sorry?

I was under he impression that Marx believed that individual agents left their own self serving devices would invariably lead to adverse outcomes.

Whereas Smith observed that individual agents left to their own self serving devices would lead to favourable outcomes.

Smith observed how resources will tend find their most efficient use without central control. Marx believed the opposite.

I don't think it is particularly close.

Well, Marx's view of individual agents is complex because he introduces class as a significant factor in potentials for action. It's not simply that all individual agents' actions would inevitably lead to adverse outcomes, but depended on their relationship to the means of production, which directed and constrained/enabled those actions.

Also he didn't exactly believe in centralisation--he didn't believe in government, and saw central control of resources as no more than a step to a socialist state, not the goal itself. Ultimately resources will tend find their most efficient use via, if you like, an enlightened "invisible hand".

The critique I was reading focussed on Adam Smith's concern about the rise and effect of money-lenders (did he use the term userers or something?), and the way the were able to exploit the landowners and labourers during times of economic depression; even that it was in their best interests to encourage such a condition to maximise their profit. As such, it kind of connects to the way Marx outlines how the rise of the merchant (middle) class was integral to the liberation of the peasants from the exploitation of their feudal masters, but set the conditions in industrialisation for the development of a new working class who were exploited by production-owning new middle class.

Um, sos if this reads more garbled than my usual scrawl but I've got the beginnings of a migraine

 

[Q-Source]

Who has been more influential in history?

Karl Marx.

He was the first one to analyse Capitalism. So, he exposed many of the shortcomings that arise from the unequal relationship between workers and capital owners.

In this way, he proposed a Communist System where the intrinsic contradictions of the capital system would disappear.

Many Countries applied a socialist economic programme for many years, so a lot of people lived under Marx's thought influence.