David Hume
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Never ever read him and only knowing his name from a university block in my home city that bears it, some others might be interested in this lengthy but informative essay I came across on my cyber travels
Haven’t you heard? Hume has been cancelled and the name of that building changed because he supported and had some investment in chattel slavery?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-54138247Never ever read him and only knowing his name from a university block in my home city that bears it, some others might be interested in this lengthy but informative essay I came across on my cyber travels
Interesting essay covering Smith, E.P.Thomson, Marx etc.
Yes that was a good find and a good article. By coincidence there will be a review of Caffentzis’s companion book on John Locke in next month’s Socialist Standard. Here is an essay on it by Harry Cleaver. It is not as good as Linebaugh’s nor as well- written, but at the end he says that post-capitalist society has to escape from money and that this idea is gaining ground amongst revolutionaries. Hope so.
Hume’s writings on philosophy are compulsory reading by all students of politics and philosophy in all English-speaking countries. I didn’t find him an easier read as he tends to ramble.
If you want to read anything of him his chapter arguing against the possibility of miracles is a classic.
The so called Liberals and anti liberals of our time should read the original ideologist of capitalism to understand that they are not liberal or anti liberals. David Hume is one of the pro capitalist empiricist philosopher that Lenin attacked on his books on the Empricists and Anton Pannekoek proved that Lenin was not a real philosopher, and he subscribed himself to bourgeoisie materialism, the only real philosopher of the Bolsheviks was Nikolai Bukharin
They should cancel George Washington, Thomas Jeffersons, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and several others who also had investments in slavery,supported slavery, owned slaves, contracted slaves, viewed slaves as sub humans, and had children with their own slaves
Although Marx criticised Hume’s Quantity Theory of Money (that the amount of metallic money in circulation determines the level of prices rather than, as Marx and others held, that the amount of money in circulation depended on the level of prices) he has this amusing footnote in chapter 25 of volume I of Capital which shows how Hume and Adam Smith were advanced thinkers for their day (mid-18th century):
“Adam Smith’s position with the Protestant priesthood of his time is shown by the following. In “A Letter to A. Smith, L.L.D. On the Life, Death, and Philosophy of his Friend, David Hume. By one of the People called Christians,” 4th Edition, Oxford, 1784, Dr. Horne, Bishop of Norwich, reproves Adam Smith, because in a published letter to Mr. Strahan, he “embalmed his friend David” (sc. Hume); because he told the world how “Hume amused himself on his deathbed with Lucian and Whist,” and because he even had the impudence to write of Hume: “I have always considered him, both in his life-time and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as, perhaps, the nature of human frailty will permit.” The bishop cries out, in a passion: “Is it right in you, Sir, to hold up to our view as ‘perfectly wise and virtuous,’ the character and conduct of one, who seems to have been possessed with an incurable antipathy to all that is called Religion; and who strained every nerve to explode, suppress and extirpate the spirit of it among men, that its very name, if he could effect it, might no more be had in remembrance?” (l. c., p. 8.) “But let not the lovers of truth be discouraged. Atheism cannot be of long continuance.” (P. 17.) Adam Smith, “had the atrocious wickedness to propagate atheism through the land (viz., by his “Theory of Moral Sentiments”). Upon the whole, Doctor, your meaning is good; but I think you will not succeed this time. You would persuade us, by the example of David Hume, Esq., that atheism is the only cordial for low spirits, and the proper antidote against the fear of death…. You may smile over Babylon in ruins and congratulate the hardened Pharaoh on his overthrow in the Red Sea.” (l. c., pp. 21, 22.)
One orthodox individual, amongst Adam Smith’s college friends, writes after his death: “Smith’s well-placed affection for Hume … hindered him from being a Christian…. When he met with honest men whom he liked … he would believe almost anything they said. Had he been a friend of the worthy ingenious Horrox he would have believed that the moon some times disappeared in a clear sky without the interposition of a cloud…. He approached to republicanism in his political principles.” (“The Bee.” By James Anderson, 18 Vols., Vol. 3, pp. 166, 165, Edinburgh, 1791-93.) Parson Thomas Chalmers has his suspicions as to Adam Smith having invented the category of “unproductive labourers,” solely for the Protestant parsons, in spite of their blessed work in the vineyard of the Lord.”
As John Keracher wrote that most religion came from a particular economic system, and Protestantism was the religion of capitalism. Some ideologist of capitalist were anti clergy but they were not atheists, but Catholicism said that Liberalism was the ideology of the devil, since liberalism asked for the separation of church and state, and their ideas were more advanced than catholicism. The original ideologist of capitalism can not be rejected completely because during their time they were advanced philosophers and thinkers
According to this, Hume also held a labour theory of value. That all new wealth is produced by humans working on materials that originally came from nature is obvious and that this was reflected in prices was accepted by early theorists of capitalism including David Ricardo who was himself a capitalist. It was only when capitalism’s defenders realised the implications of this that they dropped it.
The theory of value is older than David Ricardo
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