Adam Smith - a man of the left?

A nice thread on Twitter from Branko Milanovic. I'm not sure how long Twitter will allow people to ... er.... read stuff on Twitter, or licence threadreader to 'unroll' threads (as they have done here) so I'm going to take a chance and copy this thread out here:

When in my recent talk in Edinburgh I claimed that Adam Smith could be seen as "a man of the left" (these terms btw are not used in the Visions of Inequality) this was based on the following: 

Smith's extraordinary strong critique of how the rich have acquired their wealth (plunder, corruption, collusion, trade companies, monopoly, colonialism). That critique is often stronger than Marx's critique of "primitive accumulation". 

Smith's view that of all social classes, only the interests of employers are opposed to the social interest because advancement of society implies a decrease in the rate of profit, and hence lower income for them. Netherlands is often cited there.

Smith's string belief that capitalists' advice should not influence govt policy. This is so because their interest runs counter social interest (previous point), and in addition b/c they are good in proffering sophistry. 

Smith's view that the division of labor (which of course leads to greater productivity) simultaneously makes workers less interested in the rest; so the low orders are always "dumber" in richer than in poorer countries, in towns than in countryside. 

This requires free elementary public education (a big step for 1776).

Even Smith's distrust of the govt can be seen, in part, as left-wing b/c the govts then were formed by the rich and powerful and not by popular vote. 

Finally, Smith's criticism of the wealth of the few (Spain and Portugal are mentioned there) which have left the rest of the nation in the "beggarly" condition.