Adam Smith, le socialiste

On parle depuis déjà 3 semaines dans les médias internationaux du fameux commentaire de Barack Obama quant à la distribution de la richesse. Depuis, la droite américaine n’a toujours pas lâché le morceau et le traite de socialiste sur toutes les tribunes. 

N’en déplaise aux républicains, la distribution de la richesse est la source même de la démocratisation de l’économie et est essentielle au fonctionnement du capitalisme. Le principe est présent dans la philosophie économique d’Adam Smith tout comme dans les politiques de nombreux républicains, en passant par les écrits de mon économiste fétiche, Marriner S. Eccles, qui fut chairman de la Fed sous FDR. 

Ce dernier eut d’ailleurs cet analyse assez clairvoyant, à la lumière de la crise financière actuelle, des causes de la grande dépression de 1929 :

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth — not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced — to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation’s economic machinery. 

Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. This served them as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied to themselves the kind of effective demand for their products that would justify a reinvestment of their capital accumulations in new plants. In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped.