|
post-autistic
economics review |
|
issue 32
contents
PAE Review index
home page |
|
Forum on Economic
Reform In recent
decades the alliance of neoclassical economics and neoliberalism has hijacked the term “economic
reform”. By presenting
political choices as market necessities, they have subverted public debate
about what economic policy changes are possible and are or are not
desirable. This venue
promotes discussion of economic reform that is not limited to the one
ideological point of view. Adam Smith - the
Father of Post-Autistic
Economics?:
A reply to Edney
Andrew Sayer
(Lancaster University,
U.K.) © Copyright: Andrew
Sayer In his article on Greed (Part 1, PAE Review, issue no. 31), Julian Edney recycles, with a radical twist, a common myth
about Adam Smith’s work that has long been propagated in mainstream
economics. According to this myth, Smith saw people as wholly
self-interested: “Adam Smith’s
contribution was a step further, to give happiness a mercantile slant. In
the new philosophy there is no conspicuous concern with sympathy,
compassion, honesty, courage, grace, altruism, charity, beauty, purity,
love, care nor honor. It accepts that humans are
fundamentally selfish and egoistic and that they don’t care about
society-as-a-whole. . . . He simply declared that the selfishness of each
man [sic] and the good of society go together. The general welfare is best
served by letting each person pursue his own interests.” (Edney, 2005) Edney goes on to treat Smith as a
utilitarian theorist, and accuses him of dispensing with justice. Is this
the same Adam Smith that wrote about “the remarkable distinction between
justice and all the other social virtues . . . that we feel ourselves to
be under a stricter obligation to act according to justice, than agreeably
to friendship, charity, or generosity; that the practice of these last
mentioned virtues seems to be left in some measure to our own choice, but
that, somehow or other, we feel ourselves to be in a peculiar manner tied,
bound, and obliged to the observation of justice.”? (Smith, 1759;
II.ii.1.5). The myth is based on an
extraordinarily selective reading of just a few short passages from The Wealth of Nations regarding
the invisible hand and motivation in market exchange, taken out of
context. Some versions of the myth acknowledge that before The Wealth of Nations (1776),
Smith wrote The Theory of Moral
Sentiments (1759) but assume that the latter’s deep analysis of moral
sentiments, which include but go beyond self-interest, was abandoned for a
concept of motivation based on narrow self interest. However, the main
arguments of The Wealth of
Nations were included in Smith’s lectures even before The Theory of Moral Sentiments was
published, and the latter was not only his first book, but his last, the
final revised (sixth) edition being published in 1790, a year after the
final (fifth) edition of The Wealth
of Nations. It is inconceivable that Smith could have regarded them as
incompatible, and indeed there is now a large literature arguing that they
are compatible, so that there was, in effect, only one Adam Smith, and
that he bears little resemblance to the caricature recycled by Edney. The last 30 years of Smith scholarship
demonstrates Smith’s lifelong attachment to a thoroughly social conception
of individuals, as beings who are psychologically dependent on the
approval of others, capable of (and indeed requiring) fellow-feeling,
concerned for others in themselves and not merely in relation to their own
self-interest, hence capable of benevolence and compassion as well as
selfishness, susceptible to shame as well as vanity, and as having a sense
of justice. Smith was not Mandeville or Hobbes and his whole philosophy
and social theory was utterly at odds with what we now term the autistic
model of individuals assumed by contemporary economics. It would be a
tragic irony indeed if the post-autistics movement were to overlook this.
Here are a few references from this literature, though a careful reading
of both the The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations is
indispensable. References Evensky,
J. 1993, 'Ethics and the Invisible Hand', Journal of Economic Perspectives 7
(2)
pp.197-205. Fitzgibbon,
A. 1995, Adam Smith's System of Liberty, Wealth and Virtue, London:
Clarendon
Press. Griswold,
C.L. Jr., 1999, Adam Smith and the Virtues of
Enlightenment, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press Lubasz, H.
1998, 'Adam Smith and the
Invisible Hand - of the market?’, in R.Dilthey
(ed.) Contesting Markets, Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, pp. 37-55. Nieli,
R. 1986 ‘Spheres of intimacy and the Adam Smith problem’, Journal of
the History of
Ideas,
XLVII, pp.611-24 Otteson,
J.R. 2002 Adam Smith’s Marketplace of
Life, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press Sen,
A. 1987, On Ethics and Economics, Oxford:
Blackwell Smith,
A. 1759:1984, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Indianapolis: Liberty
Fund Smith,
A. 1776:1976, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations, ed. by E.Cannan, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press Tabb, W. K.
1999, Reconstructing Political
Economy, London: Routledge Weinstein,
J. R. 2001, On Adam Smith,
Belmont: CA: Wadsworth, 2001; Winch, D.
1978 Adam Smith's Politics,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Winch,
D. 1996 Riches and Poverty; An
Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain,
1750-1834
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 ___________________________ SUGGESTED CITATION: |