fact less technological than social. It stemmed from the mobilization
of large numbers of workers and machines in factories producing on a
continuous basis for the market. A new society was thus born, defined
by two classes, workers who owned nothing but the labor they could
sell for wages, and capitalist employers driven to innovate and invest
by competition and by the search for profit.^51
Capitalism was triumphant and, with it, a political creed that came
to occupy a central place in the vision of the right:laissez-faire.
Introduced in the eighteenth century by the French physiocrats, the
idea oflaissez-fairewas refined by Scottish political economist Adam
Smith. InThe Wealth of Nations(1776), Smith explained that gen-
erally, an individual “intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in
many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which
was no part of his intention....By pursuing his own interest he fre-
quently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he
really intends to promote it.”^52
As a reformist and moral philosopher, Adam Smith foresaw the
tensions that could arise with the advent of a market society.^53
“Wherever there is great property,” he observed, “there is great
inequality...the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the
many.” Following John Locke, Smith sided with the owner of valuable
property, “which is acquired by the labour of many years, or perhaps
of many successive generations” against the potential “injustice” of
the poor, the owner’s “unknown enemies.” Still, Smith admitted that
“civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property,
is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of
those who have some property against those who have none at all.”^54
Smith’s followers, it must be said, tended to be less concerned by
inequality. The Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus, for one, presented
poverty as a necessary check to prevent population growth from
exceeding nature’s capacity to provide for food.
(^51) Eric J. Hobsbawm,Industry and Empire: From 1750 to the Present Day,
52 Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1968, pp. 56–68.
Adam Smith,An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
(1776), London, Methuen, 1904, The Library of Economics and Liberty, Book
53 4, Chapter 2 (IV.2.9) (www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.html).
Albert S. Lindemann,A History of European Socialism, New Haven, Yale
54 University Press, 1983, pp. 31–33.
Smith,An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,
Book 5, Chapter 1 (V.1.45 and V.1.55).
96 Left and Right in Global Politics