Karl Marx and Adam Smith: Division of Labour A nation is just a vast establishment, where the labour of each, however diverse in character, adds to the wealth of all. Two brilliant people of their time are both respected in their views for creating a near perfect society where everyone is happy. Adam Smith, a respected Scottish political economist philosopher born in 1723, had the goal of perfect liberty for all individuals through the capitalistic approach. While Karl Marx, born in 1818, believed in individual freedom for society and intellectually criticized capitalism giving reasons as to why it was irrational and why it would fail. Adam Smith’s very first sentence claims that, "The greatest improvement in the productive powers
However, once an individual can learn all the skills necessary of pin making and master it, he therefore does his part and allows his fellow workers do what they know to do best, production rapidly improves and speeds up. Like Marx, Smith realized the importance of production. Smith contended that production was the key to a growing economy. In Smith’s ideal free-trade society, average persons could start businesses, free from government intervention, and consumers would purchase from these producers at a price determined by the laws of supply and demand. Smith asserted that the innate function of the free market was determined by the simple laws of supply and demand. This division of labour effects an easy and natural combination of economic efforts for the creation of the national dividend. ‘Whereas animals confine themselves to the direct satisfaction of their individual needs, 1 man produces commodities to exchange them for others more immediately desired.’ [iii] Hence there results for the community an enormous increase of wealth; and division of labour, by establishing the co-operation of all for the satisfaction of the desires of each, becomes the true source of progress and of well-being. This simple connection between supply and demand is the inherent free market mechanism that allows for the natural flow and efficiency