Capitalism
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During the mid-1700's, a group of French economists known as physiocrats urged the government to stop interfering in foreign trade. Their policy, called laissez-faire, a French phrase meaning allow to do, demanded an end to tariffs and other trade restrictions. Adam Smith argued that a nation could increase its wealth most rapidly by allowing free trade. He believed that people who followed their economic best interests would automatically act in the economic best interest of society. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith described how laissez-faire should work. His ideas first became influential during the early 1800's. The German social philosopher Karl Marx disagreed with Smith and claimed that laissez-faire capitalism would be destroyed. He predicted that owners of businesses would become wealthier while their workers grew poorer and, the workers would overthrow the capitalist system. Marx was wrong in predicting that workers in capitalist economies would not share in rising standards of living. During that period, the British government began to remove its control and we began to develop the first capitalist economy...