Putting the “Political” Back Into Adam Smith’s Political Economy: Smith on Power and Privilege, Faction and Fanaticism, and Corruption and Conspiracies

A new paper from David M. Hart given at this year’s History of Economic Thought Society of Australia conference.

http://davidmhart.com/liberty/Papers/Smith/Smith_ClassFactionCorruption2023.html
h/t @mzwolinski

#economics #politicaleconomy #intellectualhistory #classtheory #classicalliberalism #liberal

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To understand how agorists organize, we must look at two forms of markets. I (personally) call these spider markets and ant markets.

The spider market is the statist market. It is comprised of one or more massive, all-controlling organization, which is connected to a several slightly smaller powerful organizations, and so on. The hierarchy in this market is not really voluntary, as right-libertarians claim, due to the lack of all choices that would be present without the state. People generally do not like being bossed around.

An ant market is a stateless market. Ants, contrary to popular thought, operate not in a distinctly democratic fashion as syndicalists and communists promote, or monarchist, as many think they do, but quite independently and without hierarchy. Each operator in an ant market is self-sufficient, yet fully connected to all available choices, free or otherwise, and able to organize as they please.

#agorism #p2p #markets #organization #classtheory