From this source:
"I
didn’t do any research at all on Smith. I just read him. There’s no
research. Just read it. He’s pre-capitalist, a figure of the
Enlightenment. What we would call capitalism he despised. People read
snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody
reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about
how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the
point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will
destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and
ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be. And therefore in any
civilized society the government is going to have to take some measures
to prevent division of labor from proceeding to its limits."
"This
is true of classical liberalism in general. The founders of classical
liberalism, people like Adam Smith and Wilhelm von Humboldt, who is one
of the great exponents of classical liberalism, and who inspired John
Stuart Mill — they were what we would call libertarian socialists."
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