ADAM SMITH'S MISTAKE

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Summary: will open your eyes about ECON 101
Review: Kenneth Lux's and Mark A. Lutz's collaborative and individual efforts should be more widely known, especially among Left Intellectual circles, and that they aren't is quite a shame.

It's also a pity such an earthshattering book as this is now out of print, for it diagnoses the rot at the core of Classical Neoliberal economics so eloquently and plainly. It is a strongly ethical critique that lays bare a critical mistake in the reasoning of Adam Smith...a mistake that has been siezed on by all subsequent Neo-liberal "classical" economists and is the only thing they care to remember about Adam Smith...It was joked once on NPR that Adam Smith couldn't get a job in todays' business press because he'd be percieved as "too lefty". This is actually quite true...if, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, anyone would actually bother to mull thru the whole of Smith's works. But no, what gets lached on to is the selfishness doctrine (Smith's Mistake) as the key economic engine, and all of Smith's moral reservations and other conscientious handwringing are forgotten/rendered mute by this mistake...and it is upon this mistake that the whole unjust real-existing capitalist world order has been built and continues to rest.

"So?" you might say, "Marx already did this in Das Kapital". Well, yes, but not quite. Lux knows about Marx, of course, and has a few humanistic/ethical choice barbs to toss his way also.

Although Lux does not use this language to describe his position, his solution to the dilema does basically come from the anarcho-syndicalist circles of Spain (both during and even, covertly, AFTER the Spanish Civil War), plus a little Gandhi & MLK thrown in for good measure. That summary is a bit too pat, and it's hard to summarize briefly and still do the book justice; JUST READ IT. You will never look at economics quite the same ever again.

All in all a fine book that has pride of place on my bookshelf. Worth conducting an "out of print" booksearch for, by all means.

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Summary: Adam Smith's Mistake ... A Book Not to be Missed!!!
Review: Seldom if ever does one come across a book, so succinct, so seductive and so persuasive in its analysis and treatment on what constitutes the core and foundation of the subject of modern economics. Tracing its development to the times of Adam Smith (and earlier) and the subsequent edification of his work by the motivated self interests of Malthus, Ricardo and others, Lux lays bare the corrupting and narcissist venality of a depraved era that was fashioned into respectability, to spawn the cataclysmic upheavals of the past three centuries, spanning countries and continents of planet earth.

Kenneth Lux argues forcefully that Adam Smith's thesis 'The Wealth of Nations' is but a clarion call to Greed, despite Smith's original intentions to the contrary.

Long after this 'mandate for greed' was absorbed into the fabric of accepted social behaviour and instituted as the norm for legally sanctified economic intercourse, the nations of the world convulse rapaciously with the disproportionate spread in wealth. And the ecosystems of the planet, its air, its earth and its water tether on the brink of collapse.

With the keen insight of the psychologist Kenneth Lux offers a glimmer of redemption from the present dismal state of affairs... "temper 'self interest' with 'benevolence' and things can become very different" he counsels. He does not claim originality for this idea, a truism to be found in all the old books of wisdom. Something mankind has lost sight of and is in urgent need of rediscovery.

Sadly this book by Kenneth Lux "Adam Smith's Mistake: How A Moral Philosopher Invented Economics And Ended Morality", Shambhala 1990, is out of print and out of stock. A few second hand copies retail at three times the original cost!