Adam Smith saw the greed of modern capitalism for what it was - a form of destructive ambition that may have favorable effects on the productive capacities of society, but which is of no direct benefit to anyone - not even to the greedy themselves, whose illusory chase after a will-o-the-wisp leaves them morally bankrupt and unhappy.

Freedom is an unprovable but unavoidable presupposition, not an article of faith.

No theory about our bodies as mere objects of observation and calculation (as distinct from partners in communicative interaction, assumed to be free) can comprehend human nature.

We can't coherently deny, or even decline to affirm, that we are free.

Kant considers belief in God and immortality to be items of "faith" because he relates faith to the pursuit of ends - in this case, the highest good.

What Smith and Marx have in common is that they were both philosophers of great vision and perceptiveness, deep humanity, and a sense of social reality that has been lost in the abstractly formalistic economic theories that have dominated the field since the last third of the nineteenth century.

Smith could not be expected to have anticipated the horrors that were to come. But even in his own time, he was a defender of certain state actions that he thought necessary in order to safeguard the good effects of commercial society (Smith did not speak of 'capitalism' and was acquainted only with an early undeveloped form of it). Among these state actions the chief was general public education.