Long: The Marxists were right

"The Marxists were right [don't worry; we haven't lost our minds!] in thinking that present-day society is characterized by power relations that systematically impoverish the lower-classes while increasing the power of the wealthy. Their mistake, however, was to identify CAPITALISM as the culprit. Adam Smith, a more observant social critic than Marx, recognized that capitalists may well be the chief ENEMIES of capitalism. The rich often prefer to buy special government privileges rather than face the discipline of free-market competition."

~Roderick T. Long. Who's the Scrooge?: Libertarians and Compassion


{I would not be in agreement that Smith is necessarily a more observant social critic, but I am willing to concede that, the identification of the conceptual abstraction of "capitalism" as a cause of social-ills, is a philosophical misstep of Marx.}