Adam Smith is known as the father of modern capitalism. Born in Scotland in 1723. He studied at Glasgow and Oxford. He later became a professor of moral philosophy at the Univ. of Glasgow in 1752. His most famous writing was An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).

In that work, Smith postulated the theory of the division of labor and emphasized that value arises from the labor expended in the process of production. He was led by the rationalist current of the century, as well as by the more direct influence of Hume and others, to believe that in a laissez-faire economy the impulse of self-interest would bring about the public welfare; at the same time he was capable of appreciating that private groups such as manufacturers might at times oppose the public interest. Smith was opposed to monopolies and the concepts of mercantilism in general but admitted restrictions to free trade, such as the Navigation Acts, as sometimes necessary national economic weapons in the existing state of the world. He also accepted government intervention in the economy that reduced poverty and government regulation in support of workers. Learn more at the Adam Smith Institute


Karl Marx believed that the only way to create a true democracy was to over throw the greedy bourgeois and create a communistic anarchist society. Also,he believed that all of history could be explained through class struggle.

Marx studied law at Bonn and Berlin, but became interested in philosophy and took a Ph.D. degree at Jena (1841). He early rejected the idealism of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and turned toward materialism, partly through the influence of Ludwig Feuerbach and Moses Hess.

In 1847 Marx joined the Communist League and with Engels wrote for it the famous Communist Manifesto (1848), which strikingly expressed his general view of the class struggle. The failure of the revolutions of 1848 convinced Marx of the need to stimulate the consciousness and solidarity of the working class through the founding of open revolutionary parties.


Who is the second most powerful man in the world next to George W. Bush?

Well, some say this man is

Ben Bernanke is the current chairperson for the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States. Learn more about the Federal Reserve System at the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank web page, or the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis web page.