Economic Heritage: Adam Smith vs. Karl Marx
The problem of this study was to determine the number of first semester college freshmen who could correctly identify the individuals who are generally considered the "fathers" of communism and capitalism. A questionnaire was administered to 241 freshmen students enrolled in English 101, College Reading and Writing, at Texas A&M University-Commerce. Thirty-eight percent of the students correctly identified Adam Smith. Forty-six percent of the students correctly identified Karl Marx. Only 22% of the students correctly identified both men. A vast majority of the respondents--218 of the 241--indicated that they had a high school economics course or an economics component in their high school curriculum. Of these 218 students, 48 percent correctly chose Marx as the "father" of communism, while only forty percent chose Smith as the "father" of capitalism. Economic Heritage Economic heritage is an important aspect of any society or nation. We have been fortunate to have adopted the capitalistic or free enterprise system of economics since our beginnings as a nation in 1776. Who was the individual most responsible for this occurrence? Clearly it was Adam Smith and his groundbreaking and insightful work "The Wealth of Nations," which was published in 1776, and which formed the basis for our founding fathers to adopt and implement capitalism as a means to distribute goods and services within our nation. Conversely, the person considered the founder of communism was Karl Marx who, through his defining work "Das Kapital" influenced many nations to follow the path of communism as the economic system to distribute wealth. The two economic systems have been in a struggle for dominance for over 100 years. In recent years, it appears that the winner in the contest between capitalism and communism is capitalism or the free enterprise system. The researchers have conducted three previous studies to determine whether recent high school graduates or beginning college students are able to identify the founding fathers of these competing systems. This was done as a gauge or proxy to measure the young student's knowledge of this nation's economic heritage. The citizens of the United States have enjoyed unparalleled economic success for more than 200 years. Certainly the influence of Adam Smith should be recognized and appreciated. But is this the case? In the earlier studies of freshman college students on this issue, it was found that more students were able to identify Karl Marx as the founder of communism than could identify Adam Smith as the synthesizer and main proponent of the free enterprise system. The first survey was conducted in 1984 since Texas had introduced legislation which mandated an economic component in all high school curricula by the 1978-79 year. Thus, the mandate for an economic component had been in place for about 5 years. In 1973, the Texas Legislature mandated that all public high schools provide instruction in the "essentials of the free enterprise system." Subsequently, the State Board of Education amended school accreditation standards to require that all schools: (a) offer an elective free enterprise course to all high school students, (b) incorporate the study of the free enterprise system into the required high school social studies courses, and (c) correlate free enterprise education instruction with the elementary curriculum (Texas Education Agency, 1979). The Economic Education Act of 1977 gave the State Board of Education power to expand the scope of free enterprise education and listed deadlines for the implementation of economic education in Texas public schools. Adopted measures for grades 10-12 were implemented for the 1978-1979 school year (Manton & English, 2000, p. 468). The results of surveying mostly freshmen students in two sections of introduction to business classes consisting of 201 students, showed that 73% were able to correctly identify Karl Marx compared to only 22% correctly identifying Adam Smith. …