Adam Smith lived in a time when industry was on the verge of revolution. A unique relationship between workers and machines had begun, one in which the two worked together, in an almost equal partnership, to produce marketable goods. This leads one to wonder if the newfound brotherhood of man and machine affected Smith’s writings. What is more, did Smith see people as a means toward an end? It is hard to avoid thinking as much, when he speaks of workers in terms of what they can produce. In WON, he spends almost an entire page analyzing the output of pin makers, and how they can become more efficient by dividing their labor. It is true that he was a scientist, whose job was to quantify the activities of workers. However, the way he speaks of the division of labor makes it seem as though it is a way to transcend the bothersome tendencies of humanity.
Smith states in WON that, “The rapidity with which some of the operations of those manufactures are performed, exceeds what the human hand could, by those who had never seen them, be supposed capable of acquiring.” Essentially, Smith’s process involves the greater value of the whole above that of the individual. According to him, people achieve maximum efficiency when they are cogs in a vast network of industry.
In addition to thinking of people as commodities, he does not have a particularly sunny view of humanity. When speaking of a common workman in WON, Smith states that the problem of too many tasks at once “renders him almost always slothful and lazy, and incapable of any vigorous application.” He also states that most of the technological innovations of the age had been created by bored, lazy workers who wanted to make their jobs easier.
The novelty of Smith’s somewhat cynical world view is that he spins it as positive. The idle curiosity of a lazy workman turns into “a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.” The mean necessities of trying to earn a living force people to “exchange a great quantity of his own goods for a great quantity” and supply his neighbors “abundantly with what they have occasion for.”
It would appear that Smith acknowledges a certain roughness with regards to humanity, and claims that it all works out for everyone’s benefit. If anything, he could be regarded as the world’s most perceptive optimist.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
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8 comments:
You make an excellent point, Daniel, but I'm inclined t believe that Smith was, rather than a perceptive optimist, was a detached philanthrope. Or, better yet, he was the epitome of a humanist. He believed that humanity's ability to function smoothly was an outcome of their ability to become these rational working-machines. I think that Smith's rational and almost cold approach on the matter is the defining point that makes him an humanitarian.
Great post! Made me think... Economics is said to be a social science - one that studies human behavior in the natural environment - like psychology or sociology and other "humanities" fields. Why is it, then, that the man considered to be the father of economics (Smith) and every other major contributor to the birth of the entire field of study was an elite (male) academic, sitting around theorizing about what is most beneficial for human beings belonging to a specific society? Why did he decide that maximizing output was synonymous to maximizing happiness? And was he correct? (Many modern societies seem to think so, but it's certainly not a unanimous opinion...)
It's interesting that today's economic policies haven't strayed far from Smith's approach to economics. All economic policies are decided by "higher ups" (politicians, wealthy people) or math geniuses with complex models, rather than the regular people who actually LIVE within an economy.
I'm glad to be taking a class that involves concrete experiments to study human interactions rather than drawing graphs and studying models that have so miserably failed in practice, which is what Econ majors tend to do for all four years of college.
I think everyone has brought up some interesting points. Smith's view of humanity can be compared to Hobbes'. Both are often interpreted as negative outlooks, Hobbes believing man to be selfish by nature and Smith looking at man as a consumption/production-based machine. However, they both believe in a system: whether that be political or economic. They both are relatively optimistic when it comes to society in opposition to the state of nature. Smith's coldness is scientific, as some have mentioned, but it is also logical. In the same way that Marx laid out the history of class struggle by putting man into groups (bourgeoisie, proletariat), Smith lays out the complex system of exchange by simplifying man as a producer/consumer. It appears cold on the surface, but the nature of this type of literature doesn't allow for much warmth.
Please keep these comments in mind when when we read from Adam Smith's other great and often overlooked book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
What it really made me think aobut these posts was the relationship between man and machine. They seem to ponder on who is more reliant on the other. The man has created the machine to make work more efficient and effective which is no easy task. These men are later classified "lazy" because they make these machines to make their jobs easier. When I believe that it would take a strong willed person to create these machines that make life/work easier. I think these "lazy" men should be looked up to by all and classified smart other than lazy. Didnt the man create the machine in the first place? I jsut cant see how the machine would be put before the man. The man brought the machine here
The issue is not whether machine comes before man (or vice-versa), but rather the relationship between man and machine. "Machine" is a relative concept and I would define it simply as anything that helps advance society as a whole. That being said, not all machines are necessary and can often make us "lazy" and less involved in our daily activities. It is important to understand that machines are not a vital part of human existence, but there are an essential part of humanity.
I agree with Daniel's point that "Smith's process involves the greater value of the whole above that of the individual," and would add that machines (and division of labor) allow humans to accomplish tasks that are above the capabilities of an individual on his/her own. From an economic standpoint, the growth of a nation is determined by its production, and for those societies that place a value on growth, machines a necessary part of their lifestyle. I think that most of us will agree that division of labor makes a society more productive (and ultimately better off) and I feel that machines are just another way to divide labor.
The hope is that when a machine replaces a man's task he will not sit ideally by and watch technology and innovation pass him by, but rather figure out either how to make the machine more efficient or come up with something that the machine cannot do. Understanding Smith's concept of the invisible makes you wonder if he truly believes that certain problems will fix themselves, or if humanity is too complex for us to understand how we will progress with machines and other non-human innovation.
Though Smith may drag on about the tediousness of everyday labor, I believe his main-point was that of the efficiency of the group mind. Yes, the division of labor is central in the paper, but what I find interesting is the fact that the people who developed the tools to make their jobs easier were not hired to do that; they went out of their way to better themselves, thus in turn bettering society by creating a new, more efficient (or comfortable) process or good. Whether these individuals decided to produce one part of the pin because it was easier for them, or because the other person could get the tip sharper, is irrelevant; what is important is the fact that the group of laborers together formed this concept which had not, yet in history, been discovered. The notion that a group of people can indirectly deduct efficiency in almost any given situation is exciting, and Smith decided to study it.
There is some relation between Adam Smith's idea of workers being regarded as "commodities" and Marx's Fetishism of Commodities. Marx talks about representing labor by the value of the product it produces and labor-time by the magnitude of that value. He says that "the process of production has the mastery over man, instead of being controlled by him." I find this interestingly true that humans are most useful (producing things of value) when they are (as Daniel stated) "cogs in a vast network of industry."
What is more, Marx even says that once objects obtain value, that value is fixated so long as they are continually exchanged as items of value. And thus the social action of the producers becomes the actions of the objects, "which rule the producers instead of being ruled by them."
It's interesting to think that as man produces for the sake of himself and for the community, that he becomes a link in the chain-network of producing and exchanging commodities that (as Smith and Marx imply) controls him. Is man, then, an object of production?
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