A Moribund Vision

  I wanted to write about Adam Smith and his book 'The wealth of nations' (published 1776) but the more I thought about wealth, the nation state, and Smith's other catch phrase 'the invisible hand of the market', the more I realised whatever he wrote about money, goods and labour the more he was avoiding talking about power, who had it, how they got it, and why they kept it. What he wrote about was less Bread and Circuses, more turning the production of bread and other basics of life into a circus, making those who did the baking pay for doing through their performance, and measure of the daily takings for said circus was for the benefit of absentee managers of national profit and loss.

   The nation he wrote about was a constitutional monarchy with near absolute powers for the Royal Family, in which citizenship barely existed. The right to vote was something that the powerful bought from the few voters there were in the population, as if the voter and the voted for were both part of some exclusive club. If citizenship did exist then it was for men who owned extensive property in the form of buildings- they were citizens, and the fewer and smaller the buildings they owned the less of a citizen they were. Those who owned nothing were nothing beyond being names in the register of baptisms and burials in Parish Churches. They were nothings valued for their labour, and the status games their owners could play with them, with other status led citizen owners of nothings.

   The human chattels, children, wives, servants and prostitutes they used, bought, kept and discarded were not just not citizens, they would not have recognised citizenship if it wanted to hang them for stealing a stale crust. The invisible hand of the market was normally something that excited a rich man's man's groin, as if it was feeling him up, or it girded his loins sufficient for him to get aggressive towards other nations under license in the name of the state that granted him limited rights of citizenship.

  If the nation created the wealth then the wealth belonged to the nation. But in a country ruled by The House Of Lords and The King, all big land owners, the propertyless individual is more subject than citizen, worth only as much as their ability to preserve themselves with their savings and labour. If he could not be bought, then he was not worth having and better despised for being beyond purchase.

 Under the near absolute rule of George III that Smith wrote under, The King was citizen number 1 in his kingdom and everyone else's citizenship a fraction of the kings citizenship according the property they owned relative to his, and their ability to make other people chattels of even lesser citizens than themselves, thus reducing the chattel to an even greater non-citizenship. Even then such a system was relatively new and dated back to the 1530's, with the closure of the monastries.

 I gave up wanting to write when I was realised I was trying to write about a moribund vision that if it has been improved on since has been improved by being completely turned inside out, and in doing so it created modern consciousness and conscience free consumerism, a rather doubtful improvment on what went before.