Functional socialism

CAPITAL 117

stant change of occupation; and (iii) the inventions and improvements suggested to men absorbed in one kind of work. A touch here of economic idealism and not without striking instances. Smith knew about Hargreaves and Arkwright, whose spinning jenny (1765) and water frame (1767) were the inventions of practical spinners, whilst James Watt, who patented his steam engine in 1769, actually constructed it in the precincts of Glasgow University. But Smith pondered other aspects of his problem. In Book V he writes:

The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.

Our great economist and Libertarian potentate is puzzled. He sees nothing for it but some form of State education: he discovers that industry cannot alone feed the soul. Culture, however rudimentary, is essential to intellectual and moral health. So essential is it that the arch-apostle of /aissez faire calls in the State!

This is one of the contradictions upon which Adam Smith’s critics seized. But there is no contradiction. The complex of the workshop yields many truths: teaches many lessons. It is when we