This is a reader comment posted on the Daily Philosophy site and my response. The discussion centers on Adam Smith. So, I thought readers who are interested might find it helpful.
Reader comment (Dr. John Shand)
I think this is valuable and corrective view of Hobbes. The alternative is not one that quite holds sway however and thankfully. Having taught the Open University UK Political Philosophy course for several years it accords with the view expressed in this corrective essay. In fact it was a point I emphasized. Hobbes does not think people in general are naturally evil and out to harm others. His point was that it only takes a few bad apples out to do harm to lead everyone to act as if most everyone else is a threat, because you don’t know which people are which. From this Hobbes rightly infers that what is needed is the rule of law, though he doesn’t put it like that. This was his main point in my view. If he made a mistake it is that he seemed to think the rule needed to be more or less absolute. He did this because the thought that anything less would be unstable. Factually – and it is something Hobbes could not have known from historical position – it turns out that democracies that propagate freedom are more stable than tyrannies, the latter while appearing solid from their level of firm oppression have a strong tendency to suddenly collapse. And a more subtle point is that Hobbes’ absolute states idea would simply push the ‘war of all against all’ up to the inter-state level, as if the states were vast individual people. Whereas it’s fair to say that no two democracies have ever been to war with each other.
Although only mentioned in passing, I think the writer is as wrong about Adam Smith as he is right about Hobbes. One takes the point about over quoting. But it isn’t hard to find longer passages in Adam Smith that would be very hard to interpret as anything else than outlining the advantages of free-market capitalist economies (within the rule of law), something incompatible on an international level with the denial of the advantages of comparative advantage that is part and parcel of the faults of Mercantilism (which still persists today), and as founding classical economic theory and, although a variation, that of the Austrian School. As to economists not reading Adam Smith, may be so. But then in my view philosophers, and political philosophers in particular, don’t read enough, if any, or know enough, economics. If what the writers says about Adam Smith and economics and economists is correct, then the Adam Smith Institute, given its views, has been barking the wrong tree for over forty years, which would be a bit surprising.
So two and half cheers for the essay.
Reply to Shand (Gregory Harms)
I appreciate Dr. Shand’s interest in and feedback on my essay. And I’m glad he enjoyed the Hobbes analysis. However, he took issue with my handful of sentences on Adam Smith, so I should say a few things about that.
What I say about Adam Smith, that the quotes one sees are overused and have become a substitute for reading his enormous book on political economy, the Wealth of Nations, is uncontroversial. What I maintain regarding Smith not being a high priest of neoliberalism is true to the text. He is not that. Dr. Shand maintains I am “wrong.” But, it’s hard to reconcile Dr. Shand’s verdict with what Smith actually says.
Dr. Shand says: “But it isn’t hard to find longer passages in Adam Smith that would be very hard to interpret as anything else than outlining the advantages of free-market capitalist economies….”
What Shand seems to be saying here is that the overused “invisible hand”-type quotes enjoy company with longer passages sending the same received message. I take issue with many using the “invisible hand” imagery to mean that markets will simply regulate themselves, which then gets used as a justification for neoliberal deregulation. This is not what Smith is talking about—at all. Smith is not talking about markets as we understand them. He’s talking about English merchants investing domestically as opposed to in foreign lands (contra globalization). So, when Dr. Shand talks about “free-market capitalist economies,” it’s crucial to bear in mind that this is not Smith’s subject matter.
Furthermore, readers didn’t get excited about the “invisible hand” metaphor until at least a century after Wealth of Nations came out. It’s mostly a twentieth-century obsession and gives neoliberal “conservatives” something to gush and swoon about. And again, their use of the metaphor is wholly inaccurate.
Moreover, if the invisible hand is such a vital concept, why does Smith only mention it once in the Wealth of Nations? And why does he bury it almost 500 pages in the text?
I would also add here Shand’s mention of “free-market capitalist economies,” which is a phrase that sounds nice but means nothing. There is no free market. Are we to believe that Apple and Amazon and Goldman Sachs seek competition? They do not. Corporate entities desire monopoly power. One could go so far as to say they’re anti-capitalist. If readers are incredulous, I would urge them to go start a smartphone company or a drug company or begin manufacturing fighter jets—then you will find out just how unfree the “free market” is.
The Adam Smith Institute, praised by Shand, also takes this line. The ASI upholds deregulation, neoliberalism, and privatization—and amply quotes Ronald Reagan to substantiate its positions. Adam Smith is not making a case for runaway, deregulated corporatism. The ASI does say some nice things about poverty reduction but then immediately rails against “big government.” (So, how did the poor get that way? Did big government perturb the almighty invisible hand?)
Dr. Shand seems to think that one cannot be wrong for forty years. However, it’s easy: name your institute after a thinker you do not understand, wait, and then voila, forty years of error.
Dr. Shand then says, continuing from the quote above: “… something incompatible on an international level with the denial of the advantages of comparative advantage that is part and parcel of the faults of Mercantilism (which still persists today).”
I cannot be certain what Dr. Shand is saying here—I’m not sure anyone could. But, he does seem to suggest that we still live in a mercantilist world, which of course we do not. Not for over 200 years.
As I mention in the essay, Smith says very critical things about mercantilism—things so critical, they could be construed as anti-capitalist. Smith is pre-capitalist, writing during the Enlightenment. Yes, he says how wonderful the division of labor is, but much later in the book, he says devastating things about the effects of such division, including most unflattering things about the “merchants and manufacturers,” and the painful effect their greed has on foreign countries. So, I said what I said because Smith says it. It’s in the book. We just need to attend to the text, not the popular hearsay peddled by people who wish to appear as though they’ve done so.
