Adam Smith vs Karl Marx: does the market free us or bind us?

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ADAM SMITH vs KARL MARX go head to head — and every jab is rooted in real history.

ADAM SMITH

Let each butcher, brewer, and baker pursue his own gain, and an invisible hand feeds the whole nation better than any decree could.

KARL MARX

An invisible hand, Mr. Smith? I see a very visible fist, clenched around the worker whose labor built the wealth he never tastes.

ADAM SMITH

Yet it is exchange, not seizure, that lifts the common laborer higher than any king of a poorer age ever dreamed.

KARL MARX

You measure the feast by the table's height while the man who cooked it starves beneath it, awaiting the day he takes the kitchen.

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