Adam Smith: philosopher, political scientist, and economist

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Adam Smith philosopher, political scientist, and
economist

• Iain McLean
• Department of Politics IR, Oxford University
• Iain.mclean_at_nuffield.ox.ac.uk

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Outline of talk

• The few true PPEists
• The Scottish Enlightenment and AS
• Philosophy ethics and TMS
• Economics in TMS and WN
• Political science
• AS the pioneer of public choice
• And as policy advisor
• AS at the US Constitutional Convention 1787

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The Scottish Enlightenment

• Act of Union 1707
• A true bargain
• Weak church in a weak state
• Religious pluralism
• Room to think without being hanged
• Need to think of a non-religious basis for ethics
• Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh all become centres

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TMS (the Theory of Moral Sentiments 1759/1790)

• Primarily descriptive, analytic
• What is a moral sentiment and where do they come
  from?
• Impartial spectator introspection
• Review of ancient (significantly, not Christian)
  schools of philosophy
• First real appearance of invisible hand
• Two-line summary by Robert Burns

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TMS IV.i.10 (pp. 184-5)

• The rich are led by an invisible hand to make
  nearly the same distribution of the necessaries
  of life, which would have been made, had the
  earth been divided into equal portions among its
  inhabitants, and thus without intending it,
  without knowing it, advance the interests of the
  society, and afford the means to the
  multiplication of the species

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To a Louse on seeing one on a ladys bonnet at
church (R. Burns 1786), last verse

• O wad some Power the giftie gie us
• To see oursels as ithers see us!
• It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
• An foolish notion
• What airs in dress an gait wad leae us,
• An evn devotion!

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WN (Wealth of Nations1776)

• The so-called Adam Smith problem
• TMS recommends altruism WN recommends
  selfishness
• Part of the same lecture series (notes
  rediscovered 1895/1958)
• Neither of them recommend anything directly
• Both describe consequences of actions

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A big rich book, impossible to summarise but

• Division of labour and productivity
• Look at 20 note
• Actually AS probably plagiarised that bit
• Free trade, limited government
• Pioneer analysis of rent-seeking
• Contra Hayek / Friedman / Thatcher, AS is not
  anti government. He is anti rent-seeking
  government

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WN IV.vii.c.63

• To found a great empire for the sole purpose of
  raising up a people of customers, may at first
  sight, appear a project fit only for a nation of
  shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether
  unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely
  fit for a nation whose government is influenced
  by shopkeepers. Originally ends that is governed
  by shopkeepers

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Some more insights

• On herring bounty, designed to train sailors for
  the Royal Navy
• It has, I am afraid, been too common for
  vessels to fit out for the sole purpose of
  catching, not the fish, but the bounty
  (IV.v.a.32)
• People of the same trade seldom meet together,
  even for merriment and diversion, but the
  conversation ends in a conspiracy against the
  publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices
  (I.x.c.27)

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and more

• The discipline of colleges and universities is in
  general contrived, not for the benefit of the
  students, but for the interest, or more properly
  speaking, for the ease of the masters. (V.i.f.15)
• We rarely hear, it has been said, of the
  combinations of masters, though frequently of
  those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this
  account, that masters rarely combine, is as
  ignorant of the world as of the subject. (I.viii
  12-13)

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Therefore the role of government is to prevent or
overcome market failure

• Canals
• Roads
• Defence
• Education
• Culture
• Anti-monopoly regulation

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AS and politics

• Very zealous in American affairs, 1776
• AS as government special adviser
• On American taxation
• ?On Quebec Act
• On principles of taxation
• Applies principles derived from economics
• Align incentives correctly

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AS at the Constitutional Convention 1787

• He wasnt there but
• Church and state
• Humes position
• ASs position
• Madison and maybe Jefferson take ASs side
• Virginia Declaration of Religious Freedom
• The Establishment Clause

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US Constitution 1st Amendment 1791

• Congress shall make no law respecting an
  establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
  free exercise thereof.

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President Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists 1802

• Believing with you that religion is a matter
  which lies solely between man and his God, that
  he owes account to none other for his faith or
  his worship, that the legitimate powers of
  government reach actions only, and not opinions,
  I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act
  of the whole American people which declared that
  their legislature should "make no law respecting
  an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
  free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of
  separation between Church and State.

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References

• The Glasgow Edition of the Works and
  Correspondence of Adam Smith 7 vols OUP
  republished (for almost nothing) by Liberty Fund
• I. McLean, Adam Smith, radical and egalitarian
  with foreword by Gordon Brown. EUP 2006
• I. McLean and S. Peterson, Adam Smith at the
  Constitutional Convention, forthcoming in Loyola
  Law Review