1 Nov 2012

Noam Chomsky on Adam Smith

I've posted before about Chomsky's reading of Adam Smith: see The invisible hand of Adam Smith. Chomsky also frequently quotes Smith saying "All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind." In a speech in September for the Center for Popular Economics, entitled, "Who Owns the World?" he said: 

"Who Owns the World?" Actually, a good answer to this was given years ago by Adam Smith, someone we’re supposed to worship but not read. He was—a little subversive when you read him sometimes. He was referring to the most powerful country in the world in his day and, of course, the country that interested him, namely, England. And he pointed out that in England the principal architects of policy are those who own the country: the merchants and manufacturers in his day. And he said they make sure to design policy so that their own interests are most peculiarly attended to. Their interests are served by policy, however grievous the impact on others, including the people of England.
But he was an old-fashioned conservative with moral principles, so he added the victims of England, the victims of the—what he called the "savage injustice of the Europeans," particularly in India. Well, he had no illusions about the owners, so, to quote him again, "All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind." It was true then; it’s true now.

Complete transcript at www.democracynow.org/2012/10/26/who_owns_the_world_noam_chomsky