September's Lost Legacy Prize for Hannah Miller
From Philly.com (‘the region’s home page’), Philadelphia Daily News - Philadelphia, PA, USA is a letter ‘In defense of Hannah Miller’ by Ben Burrows:
“RE THE RECENT criticism of op-ed writer Hannah Miller":
Hannah Miller volunteers her time to make democracy work. She is no socialist. She works hard to restore the human face to the capitalism described by Adam Smith, an economy of small shopkeepers and manufacturers, competing fairly in a controlled marketplace.
Timothy Dowling (letters, 8/30) doesn't understand the capitalism of Adam Smith. Dowling takes his description of capitalism from Karl Marx: the inhuman facade of Social Darwinism gone mad.
Dowling is apparently angry at the misuse of government by so-called conservatives, at tremendous cost to the taxpayer, to waste our country's resources on boondoggles like unworkable missile defenses, to bleed our people and resources in the pursuit of an Iraqi White Man's Burden whose appropriateness is long since past, even in the time of Winston Churchill.
Giving every child an equal start in health and education is no more than to give reality to the belief that all of our children are created equal.”
Comment
I know not who Hannah Miller is, or Tom Dowling her critic, nor what has been exchanged between them, but Hannah Miller’s approach to Adam Smith is refreshing in the context of the USA: ‘the human face to the capitalism described by Adam Smith, an economy of small shopkeepers and manufacturers, competing fairly in a controlled marketplace.”
What a change from the usual misrepresentation of Adam Smith by too many US academics! How far from neoclassical theorists who claim Adam Smith as their ‘patron saint’, ‘alive and well and living in Chicago’, and how far they have taken their version of him from the Adam Smith who was born in Kirkcaldy, and never went near Chicago - it didn't exist when he was alive.
I suggest we award September’s Lost Legacy Prize to Hannah Miller for highlighting the Kirkcaldy Adam Smith’s efforts to propagate ‘the human face to the capitalism’.
“RE THE RECENT criticism of op-ed writer Hannah Miller":
Hannah Miller volunteers her time to make democracy work. She is no socialist. She works hard to restore the human face to the capitalism described by Adam Smith, an economy of small shopkeepers and manufacturers, competing fairly in a controlled marketplace.
Timothy Dowling (letters, 8/30) doesn't understand the capitalism of Adam Smith. Dowling takes his description of capitalism from Karl Marx: the inhuman facade of Social Darwinism gone mad.
Dowling is apparently angry at the misuse of government by so-called conservatives, at tremendous cost to the taxpayer, to waste our country's resources on boondoggles like unworkable missile defenses, to bleed our people and resources in the pursuit of an Iraqi White Man's Burden whose appropriateness is long since past, even in the time of Winston Churchill.
Giving every child an equal start in health and education is no more than to give reality to the belief that all of our children are created equal.”
Comment
I know not who Hannah Miller is, or Tom Dowling her critic, nor what has been exchanged between them, but Hannah Miller’s approach to Adam Smith is refreshing in the context of the USA: ‘the human face to the capitalism described by Adam Smith, an economy of small shopkeepers and manufacturers, competing fairly in a controlled marketplace.”
What a change from the usual misrepresentation of Adam Smith by too many US academics! How far from neoclassical theorists who claim Adam Smith as their ‘patron saint’, ‘alive and well and living in Chicago’, and how far they have taken their version of him from the Adam Smith who was born in Kirkcaldy, and never went near Chicago - it didn't exist when he was alive.
I suggest we award September’s Lost Legacy Prize to Hannah Miller for highlighting the Kirkcaldy Adam Smith’s efforts to propagate ‘the human face to the capitalism’.
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