[The Market]
You get it started with John Locke.
And John Locke introduces property.
He has three provisos for just private right and property.
And the three provisos are:
There must be enough left over for others
and that you must not let it spoil
and that you, most of all, must mix your labor with it.
It seems justified- you mix your labor with the world
then you are entitled to the product.
And as long as there's enough left over for others
and as long as it doesn't spoil
and you don't allow anything to go to waste then that's okay.
He spends a long time on his famous Treatises of Government
and it's since been the canonical text
for economic and political and legal understanding.
It is still the classic text that's studied.
Well, ... after he gives the provisos
and you're almost thinking at the time
whether you are for private property or not-
he has given a very good and plausible and powerful defense
of private property here-
Well, he drops them!
He drops them like that. Right in one sentence.
He says, 'Well, once the introduction
of money came in by men's tacit consent... " then it became-
and he doesn't say all the provisos are canceled or erased-
but that's what happens.
So, now we have not
product and your property earned by your own labor-
oh no- money buys labor now.
There is no longer consideration
whether there is enough left over for others;
there is no longer consideration of whether it spoils-
because he says money is like silver and gold and gold can't spoil-
and therefore money can't be responsible for waste...
which is ridiculous. We are not talking about money and silver,
we are talking about what its effects are.
It's one non sequitur after another.
Just the most startling
logical legerdemain that he gets away with here.
But it fits the interests of capital owners.
Then Adam Smith comes along
and what he adds is the religion to this...
Locke started with 'God made it all this way- this is God's right...'
and now we get also with Smith saying 'it's not only God's...'
well, he's not actually saying this but this is
what's happening philosophically, in principle-
he's saying that 'it is not only a question of private property...'
That's all now 'presupposed'- It's Given!
And that there's 'money investors that buy labor' – Given!
There's no limit to how much they can buy of other men's labor,
how much they can accumulate, how much 'inequality'-
that's all given now.
And so he comes along and what his big idea is-
and again it's just introduced in parentheses, in passing...
You know, when people put out goods for sale- ... the supply-
and other people buy them- the demand and so forth,
how do we have supply equaling demand or demand equaling supply?
How can they come into equilibrium?
And that is one of the central notions of economics,
is how do they come into equilibrium.
And he says: it's the “Invisible Hand of the Market”
that brings them into equilibrium.
So, now we have "God is actually imminent”.
He just didn't give the rights to property
and all its wherewithal and its "natural rights"
regarding what Locke said...
now we have the system itself AS "God".
In fact, Smith says, when he talks
and you'll never find this quote, and you have to read the whole of
the Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations to find it.
He says: 'the scantiness of subsistence
sets limits to the reproduction of the poor
and that nature can deal with this in no other way
than elimination of their children.'
So he anticipated evolutionary theory in the worst sense...
this is well before Darwin.
And so he called them the 'Race of Laborers'.
So you can see: there was inherent racism built in here,
there was an inherent life blindness to kill innumerable children.
And he thought: 'That's the Invisible Hand making supply
meet demand and demand meet supply.'
So, see- how wise "God" is?
So you can see a lot of the really virulent
life destructive, eco-genocidal things
that are going on now have, in a way,
a 'thought gene' back in Smith too.