Adam Smith on greed

The prize for dickheads of the day – always a closely contested award – is claimed here:

Students at a college where Gordon Brown has been appointed chancellor are refusing to use the name Adam Smith because they claim the Scottish economist is synonymous with “exploitation and greed.”

The students’ association at Adam Smith College in Kirkcaldy, renamed following the merger of Fife and Glenrothes colleges last year, has voted unanimously to drop the title. We didn’t feel that Adam Smith represented the values a student association should stand for,” said student leader Paul Muirhead. “He is associated with socio-economic policies that work against the people, that were synonymous with Thatcherite and Reaganite governments.

What a twat. I know of no passage in the Wealth of Nations or Theory of Moral Sentiments that recommends that the state spends two-fifths of national income, as Thatcher’s state did.

And as for Smith being synonymous with greed, the “students” evidently haven’t read chapter one of part 4 of the Theory of Moral Sentiments:

Wealth and greatness are mere trinkets of frivolous utility, no more adapted for procuring ease of body or tranquillity of mind than the tweezer-cases of the lover of toys.

Smith continues:

In the languor of disease and the weariness of old age, the pleasures of the vain and empty distinctions of greatness disappear. To one, in this situation, they are no longer capable of recommending those toilsome pursuits in which they had formerly engaged him. In his heart, he curses ambition, and vainly regrets the ease and indolence of youth, pleasures which are fled forever, and which he has foolishly sacrificed for what, when he got it, can afford him no real satisfaction…Power and riches appear then to be, what they are, enormous and operose machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniences to the body…and which in spite of all our cares are ready every moment to burst into pieces, and to crush in their ruins their unfortunate possessor…They keep off the summer shower, not the winter storm, but leave him always as much, and sometimes more exposed than before, to anxiety, to fear, and to sorrow.

Our pursuit of wealth – our greed – arises, says Smith, because we lack the imagination to see all this when we are poor. Acquisitiveness, he says, is a “deception [my emphasis] which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind.”

Hardly an endorsement of greed, is it? But then, there’s no need to read great books when your prejudices are so much more comfortable.

Comments

[John East]

When you say, "the “students” evidently haven’t read chapter one of part 4 of the Theory of Moral Sentiments" you obviously forgot that these twats were educated under Nulabour socialism. I doubt if their reading skills are up to the job of reading Adam Smith. Text messages, maybe, but not eighteenth century prose.

[Chris Williams]

Some of the blame for this has to go to the Adam Smith Institute (bankrollers: NuLabour), who've not, so far as I can tell, spent much time raging against public limited companies in the style of The Man. The ASI has presented his legacy as a highly Thatcherite one: the ignorami in Kirkaldy are probably mistaking the output of the thinktank for that of the thinker. And they are too lazy to read the originals.

[dearieme]

How right you are: the twats should read and The W of Ns is a Great Book. My guess is that if you've read that, The Origin of Species and some Gibbon, added on some maths, physics and Shakespeare, you'll have got yourself a better education that most of our godforsaken schools offer.

[Adam]

Sounds like this school needs to establish mandatory economics courses!

[Paddy Carter]

and to think a mere decade ago student bodies were beacons of probity and erudition

damn NuLabour, damn them to hell!

[Paul Davies]

It is shocking. There was another piece in The Times today, from Rees-Mogg suggesting that when he was writing, Adam Smith and his gang were firmly of the 'left'...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,170-1808564,00.html

[Andrew Duffin]

"We didn’t feel that Adam Smith represented the values a student association should stand for"

Values like logic, rational argument, that sort of thing.

Well he's right on the money with that sentence at least.

I have to admit I found it odd that el Gordo would want to be associated with an institution named after Adam Smith. I suppose these East-Coasters have to stick together.

[Tim Hicks]

It seems Professor Iain McLean at Oxford agrees with most of the comments here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2090-1817844,00.html

[Kate Melville]

I don't think it's fair to brand all the students "twats". i'm a student at the college and am currently involved in a long running debate with Mr Muirhead over this. I don't agree with him. He may be a twat, doesn't mean we all are. I've also pointed out to him that there was an American Burlesque dancer of the same name.

[Kate Melville]

I don't think it's fair to brand all the students "twats". i'm a student at the college and am currently involved in a long running debate with Mr Muirhead over this. I don't agree with him. He may be a twat, doesn't mean we all are. I've also pointed out to him that there was an American Burlesque dancer of the same name.

[Laura Easson]

Obviously there is some sense in what is happening at the college as everyone voted unanimously for the name to be changed to Jennie Lee. I don't think it was a harsh stance against Adam Smith himself but merely a recognition of what Jennie Lee achieved. After all they didn't protest against the college itself being named after Smith.

[Laura Easson]

Obviously there is some sense in what is happening at the college as everyone voted unanimously for the name to be changed to Jennie Lee. I don't think it was a harsh stance against Adam Smith himself but merely a recognition of what Jennie Lee achieved. After all they didn't protest against the college itself being named after Smith.

[Neil Jackson, photojournalist]

‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but their self-love.’

Wealth of Nations (1776) book 1, chapter 2
Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith
The guy was waking people up. The students are a bunch of tossers - who in ten years time will be working in banks.

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