>>>>Adam Smith is an observer of the Industrial Revolution. He realizes the process of transformation
that is going on around him and has profound insights into the mechanics of the transformation
itself, what is changing and why. And he offers a generally optimistic view of industrial
transformation. He says why are some nations wealthy? It's because of trade and the division
of labor, the expansion of markets. He says that this creates a general plenty, a universal
opulence that extends itself even to the ranks of the lowest members of society: that it
lifts up even the poor. Even if they're not as wealthy as the rich, they're better off
than they had been before these kinds of changes. And so Smith offers a broadly optimistic view
of the industrial transformation. And there's something that's somehow utilitarian about
Smith's arguments that this creates a greater good, that it creates more happiness, opulence,
for the mass of people and there's also something liberal about Smith's vision in the sense
that Smith sees that people are naturally economic creatures, that they naturally have
property rights and that it's somehow part of their innate endowment to truck and to
barter and exchange. So this is Smith's view of the Industrial Revolution that is epitomized
in the publication in 1776 of the "Wealth of Nations". Let's turn now to a later observer
of the Industrial Revolution, and move from the world of the Scottish Enlightenment to
the world of radical politics in mid-19th century continental Europe. And above all
to the figure of Karl Marx. Karl Marx, like Smith, is an observer of industrialization.
Karl Marx, like Adam Smith is a philosopher. He's a follower in his youth of the great
German philosopher Hegel. Marx is classically trained, in fact, he wrote his dissertation
on the different theories of materialism of atomism in the ancient philosophers Democritus
and Epicurus. It's a very, very boring dissertation, don't recommend you read it. And so Marx like
Smith is an economist and a philosopher. He's an observer of the Industrial Revolution,
but unlike Smith, he is far more skeptical about this transformation. Unlike Smith he
is not a complete optimist. Unlike Smith, he focuses on the negative consequences of
industrial transformation. And indeed, Marx lives at a more advanced stage of industrialization.
By the mid-19th century industrial transformation had swept across western Europe, transformed
societies and the consequences of this were more plain to see. And in particular Marx
came to focus on the oppression, the negative consequences, those who were powerless in
the context of industrialization. And so Marx has a very different viewpoint. Marx is not
disagreeing with Smith that the Industrial Revolution is a progressive moment, that it
represents an advance in the means of production and the technology of society in the amount
of produce of human economy, but Marx is worried not just about the distributive consequences
of the Industrial Revolution but the transactional consequences. And so as we focus in on Marx
as a thinker, as a philosopher, let's focus in on this particular aspect of his thought.
Marx was an admirer of Aristotle. He says he's the most profound of the ancient thinkers,
and Marx's thought can be seen as a continuing effort to come to grips with transactional
justice as Aristotle defines it-- an exchange that should be fair. For Marx the fundamental
problem of industrial transformation is the rise of wage labor. For Marx, the rise of
wage labor is the essence of industrial transformation. It is the key point where humans have fundamentally
transformed their relationship to property, to themselves, to society, to their legal
and constitutional orders. Marx is an observer of the industrial transformation and for Marx
this is a shift from what we would call feudalism to what we can call capitalism. And Marx is
a critic of capitalism because he sees the most basic relationship of this kind of economy,
this kind of society, as a failure of transactional justice. Because Marx thinks that wage contracts
in his society are unfair, that they are a violation of the principles of justice.