I have been an admirer of Adam Smith for the simple reason that he was a Professor of Moral philosophy and his writings seethe with his personality. Probably the influence of Adam Smith has been such as to have lasted nearly two and a half centuries and so far as one sees, this will continue. His writings have an aura of truth and everlasting analysis.
The problem has been a perfunctory analysis of his writings and thereby giving false image of the man and his work. The modern economists have been influenced by tangibles, whereas the work of Adam Smith is all intangibles. The worst example that one can do is to call him a political economist. This is a latter day development and a perversion of the moral sentiments of the great man.
Those were the days when populations made do with very little and greed had not entered the system. His depth is difficult to realise and it may be almost impossible to resurrect the social system of the times that I am speaking of. Political economics is a rationalisation for doing what political governments do and it is roughly four decades old.
His concepts have been taken and roughed up by petty minds; petty not in the money sense but in terms of concepts and perversion through dogma and doctrinaire and pushing his works in a manner that does injustice to him. From what I can gather, and probably I am the only one with his original lectures, is to see the man differently in the context of the developing world. His use of words was in very simplified terms.
Smith lived in the age of enlightenment and modern writers have a habit of giving such names to various times of the past and more recently, to modern times. The moral aspects came from the way the moral precepts were involved in the working of moral sentiments. The workings of the sentiments were closer to the workings of religion than the links with theology. This has been lost sight of by the modern specialist.
In many ways Adam Smith was a generalist, gone wild on the specialist and so the specialist had to go to town on him and this they did by embracing him and converting and distorting his message. The church was oppressive and as theology would have it, they came down heavily on any one not entirely toeing their line. The power of reason became supreme over a period of time, except for Adam Smith who allowed emotions to play a central role in his words.
Thus he spoke of 'mean and rapacious' and his views were not dogmatic, but based on human reason and requirements. How different would it be, had he been here today? The reasons of today are unable to work in harmony with modern day requirements.
That is one reason why the world is in such a mess - and the developed worl has found all kinds of perverted reasons to defend its idiocity (as four self styled experts - one from Yale, one from Lehman brothers, one from the WB and one from BBC) were doing the other day and they came to the conclusion that incentives of the order of 35 to 40 million dollars were needed to attract corrupt individuals to become CEOs.
Why world economies should be organised around the WTO, if after some period of time we would have CEOs working to destroy the system because of their greed. What would moral sentiments be under such circumstances and what would the good professor of moral sentiments teach under these circumstances? Would he go along with the likes of the Yale Professor (of Behavioural Economics) who was predicting that things would go bad before they went any better?
The BBC's self styled leaders from the corrupt and mean world of financial meltdown? The central point of Adam Smith was human requirement and not some hairy-fairy thinking that seems to be the work of present times and the electronic media. Probably the worst rendition that came was the distortion of the 'invisible hand' by modern economists.
They played the way they wanted to and gave it authority of the kind that was never the intention of Adam Smith. No where has Adam Smith given the perverted mean the reason that the West attributed to him. Since he was silent in his grave, the developing world accepted everything that the developed world analysed and said about him.
The values that the developed world spoke of and keep speaking about are nothing but a subterfuge. Send a smoke signal, keep on talking about millennium development goals and do nothing about it and then at the end of the day say that these were not achievable because of the corruption in the developing world, or something of the sort that these developing countries do not have the developmental capacities. Find some reason and project it on the developing world.
The way that these colonialists have looted the wealth of the poor countries (take Belgium and the Congo), take any colonial country and see how they have developed by sucking the blood of the countries they were in and the subcontinent is no exception]. How can they change colours at this belated stage and in fact there is good reason to start a new developing country initiative of development in which they do away with the curse of the developed world.
So Adam Smith can provide the bulwark and the philosophy for starting a new initiative; and why not, for it won't be as lopsided and you will not have a losing PM of New Zealand as head of the UNDP. Helen Clark has been appointed as the new United nations Development Chief and the scale issue has not been seen as of any significance. Only the white can head these organisations, not a ruddy brown or a black.
Funny the way that these people see the world as made up of only whites and nobody else. No wonder they are paying the price of it by the way things went in Iraq and the way they are going in Afghanistan. It all boils down to attitudes and values, or as Adam Smith would have said to emotions and the fact that the science of economics is nearer to the deities than theology could ever be. The period of Adam Smith was also a period of great faith in the abilities of humans to work together.
Powerful passions were put together. In modern economics is there any concept of human nature? The blood-sucking bankers and the blood-sucking international institutions, backing the wrong policy initiatives, indicate the insensitive aspect of modern institutions. Has the WB and IMF not worked for the interests of the G-7? Let the analysts say that they did not and let a debate flow from this?
Policymakers of the modern world forgot that the human psyche is about continuity and harmony and the economics of modern days does not deal with these aspects. If that were so, feelings and emotions would have been at the top level of all policy initiatives. We would do well to heed the lessons of Adam Smith and go for the poor and the ones who were in dire need from us. Want to keep the federation intact, then some sacrifices have to be done.
Those that have robbed this country in the same way that the developed countries have been doing have to pay back, simple but difficult. The revolution of 1688 in England and the French revolution of 1793, both are indicative of how a society has to be cleansed and how Liberty, Equality and Fraternity have to come into the social systems.
Yes, money is not everything that one can ask for, probably decency and forthright behaviour is also sought. The academics have to watch out, for they cannot be part of the greed system that one sees in the corporate sector. A word of advice, get rid of all such CEOs wherever they are, by legislative means and one will see a chain reaction towards decency and good, all round ability gaining ground.
Bankers and micro-creditors have to be particularly careful for their days seem to be numbered. Micro-finance, in particular, has been telling lies to the PM and the nation. There are no holy cows when it comes to developing harmony and human nature along decent lines.
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