Party to the New World in the company of Marquis Lafayette (who had been invited to the USA as the "host nation"), he was soon impressed by the originality and functionality of the "American system", which had allowed the former British colony of forge ahead, and drastically reduce the gap in terms of development, which separated them from the most powerful European nations behind with centuries of history. List had enough insight to see, first, that the American Revolution had sprung from the need of the settlers to permanently sever the umbilical cord that had bound them inextricably to England, and break down the constraints set by the laissez-faire advocated by Adam Smith, who nailed the role of North America to a mere branch of the Empire. London peremptorily demanded that the colonies concentrate all their energies in strengthening the primary sector, and flooding the international market for tobacco, cotton and wheat at highly competitive prices, leaving the mother country was seized of manufacturing production. In his capital work "The Wealth of Nations," Smith predicted, in some respects, what would happen in the short, writing that if "it should happen that Americans, by association or some sort of violence, stop the import of European manufactured goods, thus giving a monopoly to their compatriots that could produce similar goods, diverting a substantial part of their capital in this enterprise, they would delay rather than accelerate, the growth of their annual production, and would hinder, not promoting, the progress of their land to prosperity and greatness. It would be even worse if, in the same way, trying to grab themselves their export trade. "A classic of liberalism: where you do not optimize the use of capital available, you end up inexorably for incurring the expense of consumer likely to clog or otherwise impair the full and proper deployment of the production system. However, engaging the prophecy of Smith went crashing against the rock embodied by George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, firmly convinced that the full redemption of the colonies would not be spent entirely for the increase in exports, but for the development and strengthening of the internal market. It was thus, in open and diametrical contrast to the basic precepts of liberalism advocated by Adam Smith, who were born U.S. anti-neoliberal nation par excellence. The Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton founded in fact, the National Bank (1791), by which issue money based on the existing demand of the productive forces, so going to break the relationship of interdependence that bind the production to the availability private bankers to extend credit. To issue currency to such an extent Hamilton thought not to limit the Bank's capital to press reserves of precious metals stored in the coffers, but to extend it to many government securities, of which the nation undertook to honor the payment by the wealth that would was produced in the following years, with the work of its citizens. These innovative measures, Hamilton approached the imposition of high protective tariffs on imports of manufactured goods at low prices, to stimulate research and innovation by domestic industry. Such duties would then be eliminated as soon as the secondary sector had provided American with the necessary tools to compete effectively in the markets international. However, pressure from large landowners and merchants soon became overwhelming for governments that had inherited the baton from Washington, the National Bank until it was closed in 1811. List arrived in the U.S. in those years, when the struggle between landowners and promoters of the "American system" was becoming increasingly bitter, and immediately took sides against the first and in favor of the latter. List is placed immediately opposite of the hinges of the liberalism of Adam Smith, dissects his doctrine and refuting many of the assumptions on which it was based "The Wealth of Nations". In fact, Smith looked with great contempt the state institution, which considered nothing more than an instrument of containment and oppression of the freedom of individuals, especially in the economic sphere. The same protectionism was seen by Smith as a high expression of "madness", as "Every nation, like every individual, to buy goods where they are freely available at the lowest price." List believed instead that the duties on imports were essential to the nation in order to guarantee a degree of prosperity comparable to that of European countries. In this way, U.S. investors would feel encouraged to improve their production systems and to modernize along the lines of their European rivals. But the deep furrow that divided incociliabilmente Smith is from List due to the different importance attributed to both labor and capital, the first gave the capital an intrinsic capacity, while the second regarded the job as the primary productive force, which is developed with the assistance of certain amount of capital. This suggests that the scope of Smith's analysis was primarily to study the dynamics that regulate trade, or exchange of goods, while the investigation concerned the discussion List of real productive force. The latter accused the British economist to have reduced the concept of capital only to raw materials, giving them too much importance, not considering the fact that the proper and profitable use of this capital depends on cultural and social conditions of a nation, as well as the opportunities offered by nature. These social and cultural List puts them under the name "Capital of the mind", stressed the recklessness of Smith, who had rather dismissed as little more than irrelevant in production processes. "So - explained List - the man who breeds pigs is, according to this school, a productive member of the community, but the one who instructs men is not a mere - producer (...). A Newton, a Watt, a Kepler is not as productive as a horse, a mule or an ox to pull (...). And we must not believe that J. B. Say has remedied this shortcoming of the doctrine Adam Smith with his invention of 'intangibles'. Producers mental (intellectual) are just as productive, according to this view, are paid with exchange values, and not as producers of production capacity. They seem to them only accumulated capital. "Shots seated at liberimo classic, as you see, are tremendous, but any hint of criticism of the List, if possible, even more radical:" The school [Liberal] has adopted as its expression favored the saying 'laissez faire, laissez passer', a word that sounds pleasing to the robbers, cheaters and thieves do not that the merchants. This perversion of abandoning the interests of industry and agriculture to the needs of commerce, without limitation, is the natural consequence of this theory, which takes account only of values, and not the ability to produce them, and considers the world as nothing more than an indivisible republic of merchants. The school does not understand that the merchant can achieve its purpose (ie the gain of exchange values) at the expense of agriculture and of the manufacturer at the expense of the nation's productive capacity and its own independence. "This is an objection very focused, driven against the very heart of liberalism, which considers the political economy as the sum of private savings, or the private interests of individuals, where history has amply demonstrated to be true the exact Instead, the act of individuals pursuing their personal interests with care does not necessarily (almost never, actually) improves the conditions of the nation, it follows the interests of the community. Thieves, robbers, usurers cultivate pique their interest, but it is quite grotesque to say that society as a whole would benefit from their activities if they were left ("laissez faire") to exercise them. This occurs both within countries since, and exponentially, the nations themselves. Speaking of a free market one-world nations to the strenuous and processing of mere individuals, Smith reasoned that every nation, as well as any individual, inexorably ends to achieve the overall interest of the human race in pursuing their specific interests. However, unlike the blind optimism shed profusely by the famous British economist, the reality is that, like The Fat Gianfranco writes, "In principle, therefore - and not only in capitalist society but also in the past - the conflict, the competition the clash are general and prominent, while the cooperation, collaboration, alliance, and subject specific aspects. It then takes into account with a minimum of realism. Enough with the 'pie' intentions that clouds the mind and mislead investigations. "Schmitt's an approach some of the relationships humans, but that does not betray any way the substantive state of affairs. It is in relation / opposition to globalist utopia Smith takes place the pragmatism of the list, which included exactly where you would go to parry by applying to the letter the dictates of liberalism: "In present day world the effect of a global free trade would not lead to a free universal republic, but on the contrary, the universal subjection of the least developed countries under the supremacy of the predominant power. The single market can only be achieved among nations that have reached a level roughly equal to that of industry and civilization, political civilization and power. " But not all. List did not just draw roughly the picture of the world that would be developed with the application of Smithian liberalism, but specifically declined, saying that "Asia, Africa and Australia will be 'civilized' England and blankets were modeled on the Anglo-Saxon economic model. Countries Continental Europe will lose importance and productivity. The world shaped by the British Liberalism, the task of France, like Spain and Portugal, will supply the UK market of the best wines, and those poor drunk. Germany will be offered to the market English little more than toys, cuckoo clocks and write philology, and sometimes the bodies of mercenaries, which will be sent to sacrifice themselves in the deserts of Asia and Africa to expand the commercial and industrial supremacy, linguistic and literary English. "Nowadays, you simply replace, in the context indicated by List, the word USA (paradoxically, anti Smithian assumptions born from above) in England and you're done. It 'is perhaps superfluous to point out that out of the "American system" (that of George Washington, of course) celebrated extensively revised and corrected by Friedrich List in his work capital "The national system of political economy" that Germany, like a phoenix, risen from the ashes several times, with politicians of the fabric of Bismarck, Hitler and Adenauer was able to grasp the good things that had indicated and prescribed (especially on how to enhance the productive forces) that old, underrated (and now forgotten) observer of American society, to apply economic models aimed at increasing the overall wealth of the nation, and not to swell as true Weimar, the pockets of a few grim vultures at the expense of the community as a whole.
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