Thursday, August 9, 2018

Will to Power, Invisible Hand, Trickle-Down

According to Will to Power, accumulation and discharge are two phases of one process.  Applied to Economics, it follows that the accumulation of Wealth and its expenditure are, likewise, two phases of one and the same process.  Now, Wealth of Nations, as devoted to the former, seems to present it as self-contained.  However, in the context of Smith's oeuvre in general, that the self-containment is a product of an abstraction is exposed.  For, while in Wealth of Nations, the Invisible Hand functions as a rationale for personal Profit-seeking in the accumulation of Wealth, in the earlier Theory of Moral Sentiments, it functions as a rationale for any, even self-indulgent, spending, i. e. as the source of what has come to be known as Trickle-Down distribution, which it effects independent of how anyone happens to spend their money.  So, this earlier Laissez-Faire attitude towards Expenditure amounts to a dismissal of its relevance prior to his later work, thereby abstracting the scope of Wealth of Nations from it. This abstraction is reflected in the contemporary contrast of the images of the Invisible Hand as an active intervention, and Trickle-Down as a natural process, a distinction that belies their common origin.  So, Will to Power implicitly challenges that popular falsification.

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