Andrew Ure vs. Adam Smith

It was brought to my attention after class that I was a little misguided about what Andrew Ure thought of the factory system, and how he was different than Adam Smith. Smith, who wrote prior to French and American Revolutions, was responding to what he thought was an outdated economic system that was still controlled by the state and craft guilds. He was therefore concerned with how workers could be liberated from this system. He felt positively about the development of the factory system, and thought that machines benefited workers because it made them more productive.
Andrew Ure, who wrote in the 1820s and 30s, was a political economist (not a moral economist) like Adam Smith. He was a proponent of industrial capitalism as embodied in the factory. Though he thought machines were dehumanizing for workers, he was more concerned with how workers could be controlled within the factory than with how they could be liberated. So, the question for Smith was how to liberate workers, whereas for Ure, it was about how they can be constrained more effectively.

Socialism before Marx

A couple of weeks ago a few of us stayed after class to discuss pre-Marxist socialism. Generally, socialism before Marx falls into two categories: socialism from above and socialism from below. The main proponents of socialism from above were Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte. Saint-Simon was a Frenchman who wanted to preserve the progress of revolution without the mass uprisings and disorder. He advocated common ownership of goods, but did not believe in democracy. He was an authoritarian, and wanted a society ruled by experts working for the state. Comte, his follower, also thought that society should be managed by experts. His motto was order and progress.
Socialism from below, on the other hand, was mainly a British phenomenon. The Luddites in Britain broke the machines that they thought were displacing the traditional role of the craftsman. The most organized socialist movement, Chartism, had a network of small groups scattered across England, and even published their own newspaper to disseminate socialist ideas. This group presented the Great Charter to parliament in 1848 calling for universal male suffrage, secret ballots, and salaries for members of parliament.
Marx was very influenced by the Chartists, and his idea of socialism is closely aligned with their agenda. However, he rejected socialism from above: he thought workers, not the state, should bring about the communist revolution. He also wanted the workers, not experts, to rule the state. Marx also rejected Luddism and moral economy: he believed capitalism was a necessary step toward liberation, and that capitalist production and technology make people more productive.

Revolutions and Adam Smith

We will be dealing with the following questions in discussion tomorrow:
Describe the differences between the industrial and French revolutions. What is the definition of the word "revolution"?
How does Smith's system of conflicting social classes end up functioning as if led by an "invisible hand"?
What is Smith's view of morality? How would you compare it to Kant and Wollstonecraft?