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I do not grasp exactly Humberto's point and I am afraid that such a comparison  
between Smith and Marx is meaningless : 
 
Smith was interested in the psychological mechanisms of individual behaviour (including
self-interest, see his theory of moral sentiments). Marx was not, as he put it in his
famous words: "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but
their social existence that determines their consciousness." Or to quote it at length:
 
"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite
relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate
to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality
of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real
foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond
definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions
the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the
consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that
determines their consciousness."
Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy 
 
 
Alain Alcouffe 
 
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