Blogging the Bookshelf

‘The greatest criminals in history,’ Ivanov went on, ‘are not of the type Nero and Fouché, but of the type Gandhi and Tolstoy. Gandhi’s inner voice has done more to prevent the liberation of India than the British guns. To sell oneself for thirty pieces of silver is an honest transaction; but to sell oneself to one’s own conscience is to abandon mankind. History is a priori amoral; it has no conscience. To want to conduct history according to the maxims of the Sunday school means to leave everything as it is. You know that as well as I do. You know the stakes in this game, and here you come talking about Bogrov’s whimpering… .’
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Rubashov shrugged his shoulders. ‘Admit,’ he said, ‘that humanism and politics, respect for the individual and social progress, are incompatible. Admit, that Gandhi is a catastrophe for India; that chasteness in the choice of means leads to political impotence. In negatives we agree. But look where the other alternative has led us… .’

‘Well,’ asked Ivanov. ‘Where?’

Rubashov rubbed his pince-nez on his sleeve, and looked at him shortsightedly. ‘What a mess,’ he said, ‘what a mess we have made of our golden age.’

We must treat other people with respect due equals not because we are inspired by principle or filled with fraternal affection but because we’re pathetic and useless.

Smith wrote that an individual “stands at all times in need of the co-operation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scare sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons”.

This nearly left-wing statement was the prologue to Adam Smith’s most quoted passage: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

Economic progress depends upon a trinity of individual prerogatives: pursuit of self-interest, division of labor, and freedom of trade….

Smith’s logical demonstration of how productivity is increased through self-interest, division of labor , and trade disproved the thesis (still dearly held by leftists and everyone’s little brother) that bettering the condition of one person necessarily worsens the condition of another. Wealth is not a pizza. If I have too many slices, you don’t have to eat the dominos box.