Resisting Economic Conspiracies: Adam Smith, the (Labour) Market and the Moral Basis of Antimonopolistic Resistance

Adam Smith was the first to denounce the practice of conspiracy made by the capitalists to keep wages down to the minimum subsistence level. He did not hide his attitude of openness towards the possibility of the workers resistance. The idea of letting the monopolistic conspiracies (combinations), considered both a crime and a sin, to oppose each other was not new. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries some theologians and jurists proposed that it was possible to neutralize one monopoly by using the force of another. Defensive actions of this kind were conceived as having moral foundations derived from the political right of resistance.