Adam Smith is on Our Side
Uploaded by CatLover on Aug 02, 2004
With the importance attached to Adam Smith [1723-1790] as a founding father, if you will, of economics as a "science" [not accurate, by the way] and his imputed role in conceptualizing capital "C" Capitalism, I think it is important to go back in time to get closer to source materials with which to evaluate his contributions and to keep in context the interpretations and extrapolations made of his works by subsequent authors and especially by politicians and polemicists. In this pursuit, I have re-read his central works, reviewed his principal biographers and, especially, opinions of his contemporaries.
In short, Adam Smith was a radical, a capital "L" Liberal, friend of David Hume, member of the Scottish Enlightenment and well-known to such as Rousseau and others who are credited with the ideas underlying both French and American Revolutions. In his time, his main thesis on morals was neither popular nor especially well-known by British aristocracy or establishment. Smith's thesis in his Theory of Moral Sentiments is that all our moral sentiments arise from sympathy, empathy or 'fellow-feeling' as he called it. The principle objects of our moral perceptions are the actions of others. Our moral judgments of ourselves are applications to ourselves of decisions made about the conduct of others. In applying these judgments to ourselves, we acquire a sense of duty and a feeling of its paramount authority over all our other principles of action. In this context, it is easier to see that Smith's work on political economy was, in part, an act of moral outrage at the mercantilism and industrial policies of European governments, especially British and French. Smith argued mostly from "wide and keen observation of social facts and his perpetual tendency to dwell on these and elicit their significance, instead of drawing conclusions from abstract principles."
As words like "Conservative" and "Liberal" have lost context in the current political jargon, it is helpful to remember that they have roots both in etymology and practice at any given time. "Liberal" proceeds from the Latin, "Liber," free, state of being free, freedom and "liberalis," that which befits a free person. Conservative comes from Latin, "Conservare," to keep fully, to preserve and to protect. In it, there is a sense of service to that which has value. In Sanskrit, the root is "seva." Both "seva" and "service" are moral statements which brings us back to Adam Smith and his Theory...