{"id":21114,"date":"2026-01-15T20:03:38","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T20:03:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=21114"},"modified":"2026-01-15T20:03:39","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T20:03:39","slug":"this-1300-page-anticapitalist-history-gets-a-few-things-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=21114","title":{"rendered":"This 1,300-Page Anticapitalist History Gets a Few Things Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8220;Adam Smith, widely considered the first major theorist of capitalism, abhorred the institution of slavery. &#8220;Whatever work [a slave] does\u2026can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own,&#8221; he wrote in 1776<em>.<\/em>&nbsp;In an earlier lecture, Smith indicted laws that &#8220;strengthen the authority of the masters and reduce the slaves to a more absolute subjection.&#8221; The plantation system at the core of this economy was not a competitive market; planters had secured a state-sanctioned &#8220;monopoly against all the rest of the world&#8221; and &#8220;indemnif[ied] themselves by the exorbitancy of their profites for their expensive and thriftless method of cultivation.&#8221; Smith singled out the exceptional cruelty found in the British colonies of &#8220;Jamaica and Barbadoes, where slaves are numerous and objects of jealousy [and] punishments even for slight offences are very shocking.&#8221;&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/12\/29\/this-1300-page-anticapitalist-history-gets-a-few-things-wrong\">https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/12\/29\/this-1300-page-anticapitalist-history-gets-a-few-things-wrong<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Adam Smith, widely considered the first major theorist of capitalism, abhorred the institution of slavery. &#8220;Whatever work [a slave] does\u2026can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own,&#8221; he wrote in 1776. In an earlier lecture, Smith indicted laws that &#8220;strengthen the authority of the masters and reduce the slaves to a more absolute subjection.&#8221; The plantation system at the core of this economy was not a competitive market; planters had secured a state-sanctioned &#8220;monopoly against all the rest of the world&#8221; and &#8220;indemnif[ied] themselves by the exorbitancy of their profites for their expensive and thriftless method of cultivation.&#8221; Smith singled out the exceptional cruelty found in the British colonies of &#8220;Jamaica and Barbadoes, where slaves are numerous and objects of jealousy [and] punishments even for slight offences are very shocking.&#8221;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/12\/29\/this-1300-page-anticapitalist-history-gets-a-few-things-wrong\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1903,329,217,165,770],"class_list":["post-21114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-adam-smith","tag-capitalism","tag-economics","tag-economy","tag-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21115,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21114\/revisions\/21115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}