Love, Egoism, Competition, Private Profit

Economic Liberalism and Communism

What commands our society? Love? Competition, market forces and private profit?

According to Adam Smith, the father of Economics, love has little or no importance in economic life:

 

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations. 

More than a hundred years after Adam Smith, John M. Keynes, one of the top economists of twentieth century, classified in harsh terms the nature of the regulating rules praised by Adam Smith: «gluttony». It’s gluttony that commands our economic life. It’s not love.

Surely there have been some alternative experiences to the market system vindicated by Adam Smith, namely the communist experiences, and to a lesser degree the social-democratic experiments. But they have failed, or are in regression…

And we may ask: why have communism and other projects of collective love failed so clearly in their application to society and to economic life? Why does liberalism and the market system, with its profit motive and egoistic viewpoint, appear as incontestable winner?

Adam Smith gives himself the answer:

 

By pursuing his own interest [people] frequently promote that of the society more effectually than when [people] really intend to promote it.  Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations. 

In other words: the promotion of the society’s interests within the principles of love fails because we are intrinsically egoist. Without constraints and our egoistic engagement, the economic system falls asleep.

But does this picture correspond to the entire truth? Does this mean that our societies can or should work merely or basically according to the economic market principles of profit and competition?