Smith vs. Marx on Business Morality and the Social Interest

Abstract

Editor’s Introduction Originally published in Volume 20, Number 2, Fall 1976, pages 1-6. William Baumol (born 1922) is not only one of the most influential living economists but is also one of the profession’s most prolific writers. During his career, Professor Baumol has written or edited more than eighty books and authored several hundred academic journal articles across an impressive range of topics including; entrepreneurship, portfolio theory, industrial organization, public policy, and the history of economic thought. He is perhaps most well known as one of the originators of the Baumol-Tobin model of the transactions demand for money. Along with long-time collaborator, Alan Blinder, Professor Baumol is also the author of a series of college textbooks that are extensively adopted throughout the United States and the world. He currently holds the Harold Price Professor of Entrepreneurship at New York University, where he has taught for the past thirty-seven years, and is a Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Economist at Princeton University. In this article, Professor Baumol shares his insights on two competing schools of thought as he compares and contrasts the views of Adam Smith and Karl Marx on the role of capitalists, the market mechanism, and the public good.