Re: [Marxism] Our time is not the 30s

[Mehmet Cagatay <mehmetcagatayaydin@xxxxxxxxx>]

As far as I know, it was Adam Smith who compared the poorest people of the era 
of Industrial Revolution with yesterday's European princes and African Kings, 
but even he wasn't so pretentious to claim that workers were in better shape 
than European kings and queens:

"I say, all these things, and consider what a variety of labour is employed 
about each of them, we shall be sensible that, without the assistance and 
co-operation of many thousands, the very meanest person in a civilised country 
could not be provided, even according to what we very falsely imagine the easy 
and simple manner in which he is commonly accommodated. Compared, indeed, with 
the more extravagant luxury of the great, his accommodation must no doubt 
appear extremely simple and easy; and yet it may be true, perhaps, that the 
accommodation of a European prince does not always so much exceed that of an 
industrious and frugal peasant as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that 
of many an African king, the absolute master of the lives and liberties of ten 
thousand naked savages." 

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch01.htm
   


Mehmet Çagatay
http://weblogmca.blogspot.com/


      

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