I. 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.
II. The division of labor is limited by the extent of the market.

Name	Adam Smith
Life	1723 - 1790
Country	Scottland
Category	Realism
Wikipedia	>>

Thirteen years before the first great European revolutionary disaster, in 1776, Adam Smith published his An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. In the Anglo-Saxon world this book is the major moral competitor to the Bible. As British political and American economic colonialism has carried the economy to most of the rest of the world, the Wealth of Nations, as it is commonly called, is arguably even more important than the Bible. To one, one confesses on Sundays. To the other, one offers daily prayers. The basic "laissez faire" idea behind it is a British or Scottish skepticism against all attempts of kings or laws or philosophers to lay down any general formula of behavior for creating happiness or for realizing some undefined general will. In essence, Smith says: leave people alone! Let especially those of them who are enterprising work as hard as they wish for their own egoistic satisfaction. If they specialize in what they do best, they will produce much more of it than they themselves can consume. Then they will start to barter and exchange their own goods and services with those who have done likewise. The net result will be an ever higher production demanding ever more employment and thus diminishing the material suffering in the world. Anybody who reads the financial pages will recognize that this idea is still the leading star for the "free market adherents", the strongest worldly religion we now have. And who can point to anything better in the world as it really is? There are at least two major troubles with this teaching. Material

gaps between rich and poor are bound to grow in a free market system. That is the first problem. So it was in 1776, clearly a contributing cause to the French Revolution a few years years later. Nobody, not even Smith, knew how to create a less unequal society. This is equally much the case at the beginning of the 21st century, leading to what? Adam Smith clearly recognized a second big difficulty with his theory: an increase in specialization and, therefore, in wealth, was limited by the extent of the market. When we wanted to become richer, we needed bigger markets. How do we get that? Smith's reply was essentially the removal of all those restrictions upon economic activity that existed in his days, that is, create "free" markets within your own nation. Why have we had warfare throughout human history? How could Heraclitus dare to suggest that warfare was the father of all things? Might this be related to Smith's ideas? Did a "Hegelian world spirit" bring unconscious mankind into warfare in order to create those bigger markets which would permit our species to have an unlimited "reproductive success" by unlimited wealth? Integration or globalization, permitting ever wider specialization, does increase economic production. But it also, unconsciously and without evil intention, kills off weaker cultures, subject all and everything to "creative destruction", and create new forms of dependency fetters. Cannot Adam Smith's boundless free market Bible be seen as the strongest philosophy yet for creating a monotheistic world ruled by one single ideal? But isn't this ideal the rule of Aaron's materialistic Golden Calf instead of brother Moses's idealistic God?