Adam Smith, Radical and Egalitarian In memoriam John Anderson McLean (1915-2001) Adam Smith, Radical and Egalitarian An Interpretation for the Twenty-First Century lain McLean palgrave macmillan ADAM SMITH, RADICAL AND EGALITARIAN Copyright © lain McLean, 2006. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 2006 978-1-4039-7791-5 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations * embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published 2006 by Edinburgh University Press Ltd. First Published in the United States in 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLANTM 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS. Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-73824-3 ISBN 978-1-349-73822-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-73822-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester. First edition: July 2006 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Transferred to Digital Printing 2011 Contents Foreword by Rt Hon. Gordon Brown Vlll A Note on Citations x Preface: A Scotsman Looks at the World xu 1. The Life of an Absent-minded Professor 1 2. A Weak State and a Weak Church 27 3. A Non-religious Grounding of Morals: Smith and the 46 Scottish Enlightenment 4. Merriment and Diversion: Smith on Public Finance and 60 Public Choice 5. The Invisible Hand and the Helping Hand 82 6. The French and American Smiths 100 7. Adam Smith Today 120 Appendix 150 Notes on Further Reading 152 References 158 Index 166 Adam Smith, 1759 He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of self-delusion, which covers from his view the deformities of his own conduct ... This self-deceit, this fatal weakness of mankind, is the source of half the dis­ orders of human life. If we saw ourselves in the light in which others see us, or in which they would see us if they knew all, a reformation would generally be unavoidable. We could not otherwise endure the sight. The Theory of Moral Sentiments 1759; fifth edn (probably the one used by Burns in 1786) 1781; sixth edn 1790, III, iv, 4 and 6. Robert Burns, 1786 To A LOUSE: ON SEEING ONE ON A LADY'S BONNET AT CHURCH Ha! whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie? Your impudence protects you sairly; I canna say but ye strunt rarely, Owre gauze and lace; Tho', faith! I fear ye dine but sparely On sic a place. Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner, Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner, How daur ye set your fit upon her - Sae fine a lady? Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner On some poor body. Swith! in some beggar's haffet squattle; There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle, Wi' ither kindred, jumping cattle, In shoals and nations; Whaur horn nor bane ne'er daur unsettle Your thick plantations. Now haud you there, ye're out 0' sight, Below the fatt'rels, snug and tight; Na, faith ye yet! ye'll no be right, Till ye've got on it - The verra tap most, tow'rin height 0' Miss' bonnet. My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out, As plump an' grey as ony groset: o for some rank, mercurial rozet, Or fell, red smeddum, I'd gie you sic a hearty dose o't, Wad dress your droddum. I wad na been surpris'd to spy You on an auld wife's flainen toy; Or aiblins some bit dubbie boy, On's wyliecoat; But Miss' fine Lunardi! fye! How daur ye do't? o Jenny, dinna toss your head, An' set your beauties a' abread! Ye little ken what cursed speed The blastie's makin: Thae winks an' finger-ends, I dread, Are notice takin. 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 lea'e us, An' ev'n devotion! Foreword by Rt Hon. Gordon Brown In 2002 I had the privilege to chair public lectures in the 'Enlightenment Series' at Edinburgh University, on the theme 'Can Both the Left and Right Claim Adam Smith?'. I asked whether Adam Smith would feel more at home in the right-of-centre Adam Smith Institute or in the left­ of-centre (John) Smith Institute, named after my good friend John Smith, the leader of the Labour Party, who died suddenly in 1994. I am delighted that lain McLean has responded to my challenge. In this book he sets out why Adam Smith deserves to be seen in a new light. Adam Smith had a good start in the world - he was born in Kirkcaldy. He went to study, and later teach, at Glasgow University. He spent time in Edinburgh, in London and in France. But for his deepest thoughts, he returned to Kirkcaldy. It was in Kirkcaldy that he worked tirelessly on what became the Wealth of Nations, taking long solitary walks on the foreshore as he thought through his great plan. He observed the jarring effects of the union of 1707 both on Kirkcaldy (which did badly out of it in his time) and on Glasgow (which did very well out of it). For most of the time since his death in 1790, Smith has had the reputa­ tion of an apologist for 'laissez-faire' at its most heartless. In one of the lec­ tures I introduced in 2002, Emma Rothschild showed that this reputation was born in the shadow of the French Revolution, where it was not safe to admit that Smith's work could be interpreted in any other way. In this book, lain McLean brings the story forward to the present day. He argues that Smith was not opposed to all government, but merely government by vested interests. In book five of the Wealth of Nations, Smith - according to McLean - sets out the proper roles of the state and the market in a way that sounds almost contemporary. In the same book, Smith also sets out some famous canons of taxation which - as I told the audience in Edinburgh that day in 2002 - I kept beside me while preparing my budgets. Adam Smith also published The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759. Many people have argued that Smith's two books contradict one another: the Moral Sentiments advocating altruism and the Wealth of Nations assuming that everybody is selfish. Like many, I challenge this interpretation. Foreword by Rt Han. Gordon Brown IX 'All for ourselves and nothing for other people' is 'a vile maxim', wrote Adam Smith. Coming from Kirkcaldy as Adam Smith did, I have come to understand that his Wealth of Nations was underpinned by his Theory of Moral Sentiments, his invisible hand dependent upon the exis­ tence of a helping hand. Indeed he wrote a new chapter in 1790 for the new edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments entitled 'On the Corruption of our Moral Sentiments' which, according to Smith, is occasioned by 'the disposition to admire the rich and great and to despise or neglect persons of poor and mean condition'. Of course Smith wanted people freed from the shackles of obedience to kings and vested interests, hence the Wealth of Nations, but while he wanted people freed from the old constraints he certainly did not envis­ age people free of civic bonds and civic duties. Hence his theory of moral sentiments. 'Whenever we feel the fate of others is our personal respon­ sibility we are less likely to stand idly by,' he wrote. For Smith the moral system encompassed the economic system, generating the responsible virtues of industry, honesty and reliability - and the stable associations in which we accept our responsibilities each to one another, habits of cooperation and trust, the moral sense upon which the market depended. So Adam Smith always believed that the town centre was far more than a marketplace. And when he stood under the banner of freedom, he did not argue for a freedom that gave men immunity from a responsibil­ ity to serve their society. Liberty was always more than self-interested individualism. Ideas of active citizenship, 'neighbourliness', civic pride and the public realm would have appealed to him. lain McLean has lived in Fife and he has studied history and social and political change for a long time. Like Adam Smith - who helped draw up the budget of 1767 - he has also been an academic adviser to the gov­ ernment. In this book, he shows that Smith's two books arose out of the lectures he gave at 7.30 every weekday morning for thirteen years in Glasgow, and he suggests there is not a contradiction between them. And lain McLean locates Adam Smith in his roots in the Scottish Enlightenment, the period that produced thinkers like Francis Hutcheson and David Hume, but also practical men such as James Watt, who was developing the steam engine in the same building as Professor Smith was lecturing.