Adam Smith’s Pragmatic Liberalism: The Science of Welfare

239 Pages·2020·1.907 MB·English

by  Lisa Hill

Adam Smith’s
Pragmatic Liberalism
The Science of Welfare
Lisa Hill
Adam Smith’s Pragmatic Liberalism
Lisa Hill
Adam Smith’s
Pragmatic Liberalism
The Science of Welfare
Lisa Hill
University of Adelaide
Adelaide, SA, Australia
ISBN 978-3-030-19336-2 ISBN 978-3-030-19337-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19337-9
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020
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Dedicated to Stephen Sinclair
A
cknowledgements
The author thanks the Australian Research Council for the generous fund-
ing that made this book possible. She also thanks her research assistants
Veronica Coram, Max Douglass, Kelly McKinley and Mollie Hohmann
for their able assistance.
vii
c
ontents
1 Introduction: The New Science of Welfare and Happiness 1
2 A dam Smith on Conventional Political Themes 35
3 T he System of Natural Liberty and the Science of Welfare 55
4 A dam Smith’s Political and Economic Sociology: A Quiet
State for a Quiet People 93
5 A dam Smith on Political Corruption 119
6 Adam Smith’s International Thought 143
7 A Three-Stage Decision Tool for a Pragmatic Liberal 187
8 Conclusion 213
Bibliography 217
Index 229
ix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: The New Science of Welfare
and Happiness
Introductory comments
Adam Smith’s importance as a political thinker has been underestimated,
due, in part, to the misplaced perception that his political project lacked
coherence and even the belief that he evinced no interest in politics. A key
aim of this book is to challenge those perceptions and show that Smith
does have a politics but that it has been obscured by his attempts to make
the art of governing less ideological, more social-scientific and, most of all,
more productive of good effects. Although he showed some interest in
conventional political science topics, his main concern was to reconfigure
the art of governing according to a new set of methods, values and con-
cerns. It is no use trying to read into the text what we ourselves might
expect to discover but to try and allow Smith himself to come through.
What he offers is a rich, subtle and original edifice well worth the trouble.
Adam Smith (1723–1790) was a leading figure of the ‘Scottish
Enlightenment’ and, among other things, Chair of Moral Philosophy at
the University of Glasgow. He is best known as a pioneer of political
economy but he was also a moral philosopher with a deep interest in
social theory and human psychology. Smith’s first major work was the
Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) (hereafter referred to as TMS) but he
is better known for An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth
of Nations (1776) (hereafter referred to as WN), which secured his repu-
tation as the parent of modern economics. Smith’s most influential ideas
relate to his theory of ‘natural liberty’ and the free market and his belief
© The Author(s) 2020 1
L. Hill, Adam Smith’s Pragmatic Liberalism,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19337-9_1
2 L. HILL
in the positive effects of self-interest. There is enormous and unabated
interest in Smith’s thought partly because he remains—rightly or
wrongly—the most important touchstone for the liberal, free market
project. But it is also because his work is so rich and therefore capable of
bearing multiple interpretations.
This book is about Smith’s political thought and especially his ‘political
economy’—‘the science of a statesman or legislator’—an important and
hitherto underdeveloped ‘branch’ of statecraft that was not an enterprise
separate from politics but the most important aspect of it (WN, IV: 428).
Not only could politics not be siloed off from economics, it could not be
siloed off from all the other human ‘sciences’ either; it was inextricably
intertwined with his ethics, his social science, his historiography, his realist
model of human psychology, his proto-sociology and even his deis-
tic theology.
Although Smith’s politics has been described as ‘radical’ (McLean
2006) and even ‘revolutionary’ (Himmelfarb 1985: 46), particularly in its
attitude to commercialism and the poor, his politics was not radical in the
technical sense; for example, his critique of ‘capitalism’ and class privilege
was not radical insofar as he in no way thought either should be tran-
scended. But his politics was radical in the context of how political science
was approached in his time. It was a call for government to radically shift
its attention from the fortunes of economic, political and military elites to
those of the people more generally and especially the poor. It was also a
protracted diatribe against elite manipulation of the state, against corrup-
tion, Mercantilism, crony capitalism, prejudice, ‘enthusiasm’, blind nation-
alism and a preference for glory over welfare. He also asked people to
think of the wealth of nations, not in terms of gold, a favourable balance
of trade or the extent of conquered territory, but in more human terms:
did the people enjoy sufficient freedom, security and social and political
stability? Was everyone ‘tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged’? Was the
population growing or declining? Had infant mortality rates risen to
unconscionable levels? Were people paid enough? Were they enabled to
live with dignity? Most of all, were they happy? The latter was, Smith
insisted, a perfectly legitimate question for a political economist to pose
and he repeatedly came back to that question as his standard.
In prosecuting his political economy Smith believed that he was
engaged in an enterprise so noble and absorbing that its successful execu-
tion embodied an aesthetic dimension:
1 INTRODUCTION: THE NEW SCIENCE OF WELFARE AND HAPPINESS 3
The perfection of police, the extension of trade and manufactures, are noble
and magnificent objects. The contemplation of them pleases us, and we are
interested in whatever can tend to advance them. They make part of the
great system of government, and the wheels of the political machine seem to
move with more harmony and ease by means of them. We take pleasure in
beholding the perfection of so beautiful and grand a system, and we are
uneasy till we remove any obstruction that can in the least disturb or encum-
ber the regularity of its motions. (TMS, IV.i.11: 185)
This is exactly how Smith regarded the system of ‘natural liberty’ that
was at the very centre of his political thought: as a beautiful system or
machine that badly needed to be untangled from its myriad ‘obstructions’.
However, in what reads like a pointed reminder to himself, Smith con-
cludes this reflection with a caution that the single-minded pursuit of
beauty, perfection and system in the context of a project that was more or
less constituted by the human element could end in tears if one wasn’t
careful. Perfection is all very well but, at the end of the day, ‘all constitu-
tions of government’ are only as good as their tendency ‘to promote the
happiness of those who live under them’. Indeed, ‘[t]his is their sole use
and end’ (TMS, IV.i.11: 185; emphasis added). So, let us by all means
make the system of government beautiful but, most of all, we should
ensure that it is actually capable of promoting human flourishing and
happiness.
smIth’s PurPose In WrItIng
Not all scholars have perceived in Smith’s thought a well-defined political
project. Due to the cautious and sceptical strains in Smith, Èlie Halevy
once decreed that Smith was interested neither in a science of politics nor
in ‘the political bearing of his economic doctrines’ (Halevy 1934: 142).
For John Robertson, Smith’s interest in social and economic progress and
individual choice were not ‘particularly political goals’ (Robertson 1997),
while E.G. West suggests that there is no ‘explicitly coherent analysis of
political behaviour in Smith’s work’ (West 1976: 55). Other scholars have
argued that Smith sought to subordinate, elide or ‘displace’ politics in
order to make way for a fuller understanding of society and the economy
(e.g. Wolin 1960; Singer 2004; Minowitz 1994). Some of these state-
ments are partly true but none really captures completely what Smith was
trying to achieve.