Note 202-1 — Chapter VI

The contrast between Adam Smith, at the end of the first book, and Ricardo, ch. 24, in regard to this point, is very characteristic of the times of those two authors. According to Smith, the private interests of the landowners and laborers run entirely parallel; only both classes are easily deceived as to their own interests. Capitalists understand their own interest very well, and represent it with great energy; but their interest is in opposition to the common good, in so far as their profit among a poor and declining people is higher than among a rich and flourishing one. Ricardo, on the other hand, thinks that the interest of the landowners is opposed to that of all others for the reason that they desire that the cost of the production of wheat etc. should be as high as possible.

Related to this is the fact that, in Adam Smith's time, the new theory of rent remained almost unnoticed, but that after 1815, it became rapidly popular. In a similar way, the socialists of the present time are wont to charge the undertaking class with opposing their own interests to those of the whole people, meaning by the whole the majority. (§ 196 a.)