I read it about 30 years ago, but I will reread it before making a real comment. My memory is not what it used to be when it comes to minor details.

There is a big misunderstanding as to what Adam Smith was referring to. Because he talks of 'free-markets', and in our modern world people have been told capitalism is 'free-markets', people think Smith was talking about capitalism. Well he wasn't. First off the term capitalism had not been coined yet, and secondly capitalism is not 'free-markets', it is the private ownership of the means of production. Free-markets can exist outside of capitalism.

In fact capitalism wasn't even in place when Wealth of Nations was written. The UK was only just coming out of feudalism. Capitalism took another 20 years to become a true economic system, and another 50 years before it was given a name, by a socialist btw (Louis Blanc 1850).

He also used the term corporation, which in 1776 referred to feudal corporations, not the same thing as our modern capitalist corporations. Feudal corporations were monopolies, competition was stifled and prices unregulated.

Wealth of Nations is a critique of what Smith called mercantilism. The system of the state gaining power through commerce. There is not much difference between private owners gaining power through commerce, and the state. Both exploit labour.

Adam Smith was not talking about the private ownership of the means of production, capitalism.

It's just an example of projecting modern ways of thinking onto the past. We use old texts to educate, but fail to realise how terms have been changed, and looking at historical texts using modern definition of terms leads to nothing but confusion. This is why I am always going on about understanding the correct definition of terms.

Does anyone care that most peoples conception of capitalism, and socialism for that matter, is based on gross misunderstandings of history due to the twisting of terms?

Originally posted by ANOK
Does anyone care that most peoples conception of capitalism, and socialism for that matter, is based on gross misunderstandings of history due to the twisting of terms?

Yes.

I watch what happens every day in political discourse and feel ashamed to be human. Not so much that we have these elected officials who tell terribly veiled lies to the masses, but because the masses eat it up with the biggest spoons they can find.

Just this past week we saw a shiz storm over the word "optimal". The reality of the situation was ignored by about 50% of the nation so that they could take part in the game of political dodgeball that was going on. It becomes fodder for Facebook arguments, and empowers a class of liars to continue lying.

It disgusts me that we play this game, that people would rather live a lie than give a few inches for change to improve our country. And we get armchair morons that think the view of politics they got from HuffPo or Fox is anything resembling sanity.

ETA: i am downloading the book. Once i read, i will be back to talk about it.

Originally posted by Logarock
Yes but you must know how hard it is to go back to an older understanding of a word or idea and attach it to the new or try to change the new back to the old understanding. One is almost forced to use the word as it is in modern times. The old use becomes a matter of triva.

Oh I know I have been trying to do that on ATS for years. I will never be forced to use the modern twisted definitions, even if it brings me a lot of flak. That is their ignorance, not mine.

You take the turm free market. Well is that Amish free market or wide open without regulations of any kind of "free market. The later is more like free to plunder buyer beware. Then there are market protection concepts afixed all the way down the line. Any libertarian comcept of free market died anyway with the invention of the IRS.

The biggest problem though is the fallacy that capitalism is free-market. It is only a free-market for capitalists, and that is the problem as it excludes the majority of people, who are nothing but a way for capitalists to gain wealth.

The "libertarian" concept of "free-market" ignores the problems of capitalism. The only true libertarianism must be anti-capitalist. A system that only benefits the few can not be called liberty. True liberty for all would have to mean workers common ownership. Otherwise old boss meet the new boss.

Libertarianism is freedom from all hierarchical systems, capitalism is an hierarchical system.

“libertarian” was “a term created by nineteenth-century European anarchists, not by contemporary American right-wing proprietarians.” Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, p. 57