A Closer Look At Smith Versus Marx
Like the very notion of day and night itself, the philosophies of capitalism and communism, too, have stand at opposite ends of each pole. Nonetheless, their essential difference is this: the communist, seeing the rich man and his fine home, says: 'no man should have so much, while the capitalist, seeing the same thing, says: 'All men should have so much.'” Thus, capitalism was adopted and justifies itself as an economic principle on the express ground that it provides selfish motives for doing good, and that human beings will do nothing except for selfish motives for the overall benefit of society. In truth, this was the principle claim that the founder of economics, Adam Smith, so strongly asserted in his theory of the Invisible hand as well as many of his articulate books. Nonetheless, in contrast to this, Karl Marx, a famous philosopher and revolutionist of the nineteenth century, believed that workers face constant exploitation and should overthrow those who have power in capitalist government, in order to create a new form of government, known as communism, in which all people posses the same amount of resources. Therefore, Smith and Marx's theories of social development are ultimately greater than their similarities. Even so, Smith's model proves to be more accurate of the two because it is based on a more rational consideration of human nature in terms of human greed, and on the fact that capitalism is a better form of government because it enables countries to become wealthier, and therefore, better off as a society as well, as opposed to Marx, whose theory of human nature in terms of labor is fundamentally flawed and had caused many countries to become less wealthier around the world.
Labor has always played an important role in the development of any nation. Common sense dictates that without production, consumption would not be possible. However, Adam Smith, in his famous book The Wealth of Nations, claims that all individuals strive...
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