ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses particularly on the writings of Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer. It looks at distortions in the labour market and examines the effects of guilds and corporations in restricting competition and contains many of Adam Smith's most celebrated criticisms of these bodies as conspiracies against the public or contrivances to extract excess profits. The deregulation of labour markets is said to be a crucial condition for success in the global market place and national professions are widely viewed as obstacles to free trade in services. Global professions may not sit alongside a single state-like entity but form part of a network of international bodies involved in regulating, co-ordinating and managing economic activity and political risk. Herbert Spencer viewed the development of human societies as a movement from what he described as indefinite homogeneity to definite heterogeneity. Spencer sees the emergence of professions as intimately linked to the institutional development of modern states.
