Wealth and Good

In Wealth of Nations, Smith does not address his earlier promotion of Sympathy, so that the relation between the latter and Self-Interest, which is the motor of his later work, remains unresolved.  The disconnection also leaves ungrounded and unexamined the status of Wealth as a Good, either of an Individual, or of a Collective.  Thus, for example, he does not defend his program against the familiar counter-examples of an individual suffering from either the pursuit or the possession of Wealth, nor does he consider that the acquisition of National Wealth can sacrifice social cohesion.  So, even if Self-Interest and Collective-Interest can be systematized, it does not follow that Wealth should be the object of Interest in either case.

Capitalism, Democracy, Plutocracy

The common interchangeability of the terms 'Capitalism' and 'Democracy' tends to ignore that the concept of the latter entails Equality, but that of the former does not.  Now, implicit in the identity is that of an Economic system and a Political one.  Furthermore, there is only one Political system the ideal of which is unequivocally an Economic Good--Plutocracy.  Thus, the prevalence of that interchangeability is an implicit expression of Plutocratic influence.  The classifications of a corporation as a 'Person', and spending money as 'Freedom of Speech', are explicit ones.

Health, Wealth, Capitalism

Since an organism is in constant interaction with its environment, the distinction between 'inner' and 'outer' is analytical, not ontological, e. g. from a Biological perspective, lungs and oxygen are moments in the process of Respiration, from which they are subsequently abstracted for analytical purposes.  Likewise, the distinction of 'inner' from 'outer' goods is not ontological, and just as the value of oxygen is a function of its contribution to Health, so, too, is that of Wealth, i. e. of external possessions.  Now, Smith's earlier Moral writings suggest that he conceives of his later study of Wealth as being framed by some more comprehensive set of goods, perhaps Sympathy, a priority of which today's Capitalists are oblivious.  As a result, the society which the latter promote is diseased in two respects--with respect to the health of an individual member, in whom the pursuit of Wealth as the Highest Good is conditioned; and to the health of the collective, which, absent a binding factor such as Sympathy, is internally incoherent, if not antagonistic.  

The Unhealth of Nations

Though the etymological roots of 'health' and 'wealth' are similar, i. e. 'wholeness' and 'well-being', respectively, their usages have diverged to connote a distinction between 'internal' and 'external' goods.  Thus, there has become no contradiction entailed in either the concept of a 'poor but healthy' person, or that of one who is 'rich but ill'.  Similarly, qua biological unit, a collective can possess bountiful external goods, while being beset by internal strife.  Accordingly, a subtitle of Das Kapital could be 'The Unhealth of Nations'.  For, with the advantage of decades of hindsight, Marx discovers an analytical flaw in Smith's model--that private property qua means of production breeds antagonism between those who own it, and those whose labor transforms it into profitable products.  So, his cure for that illness--the collectivization of such property, can be distinguished from his projection of the means to that end--a communist revolution, which he conceives as inevitable.  The failure of the latter has tended to overshadow any soundness of the his initial diagnosis.

Capitalism, Socialism, History

While, as the title of his book indicates, Smith conceives Capitalism as a nationalistic system, Marx envisions Socialism as international.  Thus, it is perhaps ironic that currently it is Capitalism of the two that has attained greater global coherence, e. g. the stock markets, the World Bank, the WMF, vs. the dissolution of the Soviet Union.  Now, whether or not that apparent success validates the 'invisible hand' as a principle of History is unclear.  But, less uncertain is that Marx miscalculated in putting his trust in a variety of Determinism that is as unverifiable as is the Capitalist hypothesis.  So, whether or not Socialism still does prevail, eventual dominance will more likely be a function of the biological drive that has impelled the patent global ascendance of the species over several millennia, than of any developmental principle that has been traditionally associated with the competing systems.

Humanity, History, Political Philosophy

The turning of Philosophical attention to History, by Kant, Hegel, and Marx, yields, under the influences of Enlightenment Optimism and Theological Messianism, a concept of the human species as progressing over the centuries.  In contrast, Nietzsche, Spengler, and Heidegger, conceive the trend as, conversely, degenerative.  Now, hampering both sides of the disagreement are both an insufficient set of facts and commitments to contingent theses.  For, in the subsequent century alone, the species has achieved an unprecedented unity and control over Nature, to the extent that it has demonstrated the capacity both to destroy itself en masse, and, even, to leave the planet.  So, on Nietzsche's criterion, the Will to Power of the species has been on the ascent, whether or not any other of the traditional grounds of assessment are still relevant.  So, the more modest interpretation of the History of species, based on the available evidence, is that it is a work-in-progress, with respect to which any theorizing, e. g. Political Philosophy, is a contingent endeavor.

Time, Politics, Locality

Annals indicate that social Time is localized for the earliest humans, e. g. Northern Hemisphere winter is Southern Hemisphere summer; night in Asia is daytime in America, etc.  Now, technology has standardized those differences, e. g. room temperature of 72 regardless of the season; lamplight at 3 AM, etc.  Likewise, Time itself has become globalized, as is perhaps best evinced by the recent development that timekeeping devices are now functions of international telecommunications systems, in which, e. g. one cannot even set one's clock at an arbitrary time anymore.  Similarly, if Politics is local, then the locality is now the entire planet, and no longer tribal, civic, or even merely national anymore.  But, even the earliest localized temporal phenomena are manifestations of more pervasive processes, i. e. of Astronomical forces governing the relations between Earth, Sun, and Moon.  So, likewise, the context of the globalization of Politics may exceed the tabula rasa of Political Empiricism and its Atomistic concept of Society.