Adam Smith is Innocent
Martin Hutchinson, writes on “How Beatniks, Pyromaniacs and Gangsters Caused the Global Financial Crisis" on the Monday Morning Blog (HERE), to which a Richard Williams posts this comment (29 January 2009):
“The point you seem to have taken very long to grasp is that deregulation, laissez-faire, free-market economics, etc. have never functioned. Free trade is a British hoax used to plunder its colonies. Adam Smith was recruited by Lord Shelburne to concoct the Wealth of Nations as a means of discrediting the American System, which has always been the adversary of the British System, the one that is now collapsing. Smith argued that individual selfishness and greed leads to the common good. In fact, national governments are the sole guarantors of the general welfare. Perhaps you ought to read Alexander Hamilton.”
Comment
Richard Williams puts modern spin of Alexander Hamilton’s protectionist policy writings for the new Republic, and on the German author, Friedrich List’s nationalist polemical work, The National System of Political Economy (1841). Fair enough. Any student of the period should read these and other works, and should make his or her mind up about the issues related to them.
However, Richard Williams extends his criticism of the period to what Adam Smith is alleged to have written and advised, which clashes with the known facts. Now this is not surprising because Smith’s legacy is subject to widespread distortion from many sources, not the least significant of which is the distortion emanating from modern economists who invented of a wholly mythical Adam Smith, some parts of which Richard Williams draws upon.
As for meetings between Smith and Lord Shelburne on the subject of colonies, in this case of the behaviour of Greek and Roman colonies in classical times (which he found, variously, acted independently, didn’t always contribute to the mother country, and were in states of rebellion).
Smith repeated some of this material in Wealth Of Nations. Far from ‘discrediting the American system’ (whatever that means), he wrote what history reported and what he observed about recent relations with the British colonies.
Smith’s analysis in Wealth Of Nations was not sympathetic to the aims of british legislators, and some of those who influenced them, as British governments moved towards suppression of the rebellion by British colonists. He suggested a compromise of a union of parliaments – full representation in the House of Commons and a contribution to the cost of defending the colonies from French and Spanish military interventions – Spain held territory to the south of the British colonies and the French held territories to the North and West, and both were present in the Caribbean and Central America.
From Britain’s point of view, the Cromwellian Navigation Acts were beneficial to Britain, an island that was dependent on access to and from the sea for its trade. That is a fact of geography and of commerce. Whether it was justified to monopolise trade to and from its colonies was always another matter.
Smith certainly did not think the British mercantile monopoly should continue, as he shows quite clearly in Book IV of Wealth Of Nations, in his polemic against mercantile political economy and its affects on trade with the British colonies in North America and British commercial exploitation through the East India Company and its Royal Charter.
How all this discredited the ‘American system’ in the 1760s is beyond me – it discredited the British mercantile system, not the ‘American’.
He advised Britain that it should have continued to improve agriculture as a generator of wealth (the ‘annual output of the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of life’) before embarking on too rapid an increase in industry, which he considered was the natural course of development.
Given the new facts about an independent North America, them emerging, he advised the former colonies to continue trading for manufactured goods from the whole of Europe and not just Britain (to break the pernicious British trade monopoly, and utilize competition to reduce import prices and raise export prices), and as the country would grow even richer it should develop the import replacement sectors. This was his honest judgement of how any modern economy should develop naturally. It is cynical in the extreme to see this as a 'conspiracy' or a ‘hoax’.
Smith NEVER ‘argued that individual selfishness and greed leads to the common good’. These were the ‘licentiousness’ views of Bernard Mandeville (1731) , which Smith criticised in Moral Sentiments (1759), though ignorant Hollywood scriptwriters passed it off as Smith’s in the mouth of Geko, and it has been copied since by the uninformed media for readers who know no different.
Whatever the failings of ‘deregulation, laissez-faire, free-market economics, etc.’, these were not Adam Smith’s policies – he never ever used the words ‘laissez-faire’! That is an attribution that gained currency after he had died in 1790, particularly from the early 19th century onwards.
Smith made specific recommendations about the need for regulation (see his chapters in Wealth Of Nations dealing with problems in banking and his recommendations that the Government was the only safe agency for quality controls in stamping cloths and assaying gold and silver plate and bullion).
Smith favoured freer commerce, within the ambit of laws and justice. The numerous interventions of Government in social life, including commerce, were well founded in the 18th century, including the legalisation of town guilds (local trade monopolies), the Settlement Acts preventing the free movement of people around the United Kingdom, and the Apprenticeship Statute which pretended to guarantee quality, but which enabled Masters to ‘widen markets and narrow the competition’.
His recommendation for widespread public funding of education – a ‘little school’ in every parish – was an ambitious expansion of public expenditure, with parents paying something (even a penny) for the education of all children (a nascent voucher scheme?).
Finally, what are we to make of the allegation: “Free trade is a British hoax used to plunder its colonies”?
For a start, whatever British governments did from the 16th century onwards it was surely fortuitous that North America was settled largely by people largely from the British constitutional monarchy (1688) and not the Spanish, Portuguese, or French absolute monarchies.
It is unlikely that Richard Williams (of Anglo-Welsh descent?) would be able to write so despairingly about the running of, and the outcomes from, British colonies in North America. The Spanish and Portuguese colonies have not exactly performed as well, either economically or in terms of Liberty, as the former colonies performed when under British rule and since, when to a large extent, the institutional structures of the new Republic were formed from British theory (if not practice) in jurisprudence, moral philosophy, and civic justice.
Smith himself drew the favourable contrast between the state of affairs in the British colonies in America and the state of affairs in India under the East India Company on the eve of the Rebellion (not that the ‘Indians’ in North America prospered well from the benefits of Liberty any more than the Indians under The Company did any better).
But for ‘Free Trade to be a Hoax’ it would require some serious conspiracy naivety to link this to Adam Smith.
His historical observations in jurisprudence and his writings of a commercial society were largely ignored and were not implemented by British governments. Free trade remained an idea and not an actuality; he didn’t think a fully free trade society was likely ever to occur because of the need for some tariffs to raise revenue for government (there was no income tax in Britain while Smith was alive), and without customs revenue, governments would not function in their essential duties of defence, justice, public works and public institutions that facilitated trade (as the USA soon found out).
His last paragraph in Wealth Of Nations was to recommend that:
“Great Britain should free herself from the expence of defending those [colonial] provinces in time of war, and of supporting any part of their civil or military establishments in time of peace, and endeavour to accommodate her future views and designs to the real mediocrity of her circumstances’ (WN V.iii.92: p 947; Edwin Canaan, 1937 edition, p 900, Random House).
Unfortunately, but probably inevitably, his advice was disregarded by all British governments, despite the great opportunity that the loss of the British colonies presented them with, enabling them to abandon the goal of Empire, world roles of imagined glory and unilaterally assumed responsibilities, refrain from embarking on fresh continental wars and from keeping old colonies, Canada, Caribbean, and not to embark on adding new colonies (Australia, 1788), Africa, India and Asia, and continuing with an ever deeper mercantile political economy, all refuted by Smith in futile detail in Wealth Of Nations.
‘Free trade’ was never a ‘hoax’ on Smith’s part. His thinking was ignored in practice, though his memory is only lauded in a theory he did not condone. That is measure of the British national tragedy right into the 21st century.
“The point you seem to have taken very long to grasp is that deregulation, laissez-faire, free-market economics, etc. have never functioned. Free trade is a British hoax used to plunder its colonies. Adam Smith was recruited by Lord Shelburne to concoct the Wealth of Nations as a means of discrediting the American System, which has always been the adversary of the British System, the one that is now collapsing. Smith argued that individual selfishness and greed leads to the common good. In fact, national governments are the sole guarantors of the general welfare. Perhaps you ought to read Alexander Hamilton.”
Comment
Richard Williams puts modern spin of Alexander Hamilton’s protectionist policy writings for the new Republic, and on the German author, Friedrich List’s nationalist polemical work, The National System of Political Economy (1841). Fair enough. Any student of the period should read these and other works, and should make his or her mind up about the issues related to them.
However, Richard Williams extends his criticism of the period to what Adam Smith is alleged to have written and advised, which clashes with the known facts. Now this is not surprising because Smith’s legacy is subject to widespread distortion from many sources, not the least significant of which is the distortion emanating from modern economists who invented of a wholly mythical Adam Smith, some parts of which Richard Williams draws upon.
As for meetings between Smith and Lord Shelburne on the subject of colonies, in this case of the behaviour of Greek and Roman colonies in classical times (which he found, variously, acted independently, didn’t always contribute to the mother country, and were in states of rebellion).
Smith repeated some of this material in Wealth Of Nations. Far from ‘discrediting the American system’ (whatever that means), he wrote what history reported and what he observed about recent relations with the British colonies.
Smith’s analysis in Wealth Of Nations was not sympathetic to the aims of british legislators, and some of those who influenced them, as British governments moved towards suppression of the rebellion by British colonists. He suggested a compromise of a union of parliaments – full representation in the House of Commons and a contribution to the cost of defending the colonies from French and Spanish military interventions – Spain held territory to the south of the British colonies and the French held territories to the North and West, and both were present in the Caribbean and Central America.
From Britain’s point of view, the Cromwellian Navigation Acts were beneficial to Britain, an island that was dependent on access to and from the sea for its trade. That is a fact of geography and of commerce. Whether it was justified to monopolise trade to and from its colonies was always another matter.
Smith certainly did not think the British mercantile monopoly should continue, as he shows quite clearly in Book IV of Wealth Of Nations, in his polemic against mercantile political economy and its affects on trade with the British colonies in North America and British commercial exploitation through the East India Company and its Royal Charter.
How all this discredited the ‘American system’ in the 1760s is beyond me – it discredited the British mercantile system, not the ‘American’.
He advised Britain that it should have continued to improve agriculture as a generator of wealth (the ‘annual output of the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of life’) before embarking on too rapid an increase in industry, which he considered was the natural course of development.
Given the new facts about an independent North America, them emerging, he advised the former colonies to continue trading for manufactured goods from the whole of Europe and not just Britain (to break the pernicious British trade monopoly, and utilize competition to reduce import prices and raise export prices), and as the country would grow even richer it should develop the import replacement sectors. This was his honest judgement of how any modern economy should develop naturally. It is cynical in the extreme to see this as a 'conspiracy' or a ‘hoax’.
Smith NEVER ‘argued that individual selfishness and greed leads to the common good’. These were the ‘licentiousness’ views of Bernard Mandeville (1731) , which Smith criticised in Moral Sentiments (1759), though ignorant Hollywood scriptwriters passed it off as Smith’s in the mouth of Geko, and it has been copied since by the uninformed media for readers who know no different.
Whatever the failings of ‘deregulation, laissez-faire, free-market economics, etc.’, these were not Adam Smith’s policies – he never ever used the words ‘laissez-faire’! That is an attribution that gained currency after he had died in 1790, particularly from the early 19th century onwards.
Smith made specific recommendations about the need for regulation (see his chapters in Wealth Of Nations dealing with problems in banking and his recommendations that the Government was the only safe agency for quality controls in stamping cloths and assaying gold and silver plate and bullion).
Smith favoured freer commerce, within the ambit of laws and justice. The numerous interventions of Government in social life, including commerce, were well founded in the 18th century, including the legalisation of town guilds (local trade monopolies), the Settlement Acts preventing the free movement of people around the United Kingdom, and the Apprenticeship Statute which pretended to guarantee quality, but which enabled Masters to ‘widen markets and narrow the competition’.
His recommendation for widespread public funding of education – a ‘little school’ in every parish – was an ambitious expansion of public expenditure, with parents paying something (even a penny) for the education of all children (a nascent voucher scheme?).
Finally, what are we to make of the allegation: “Free trade is a British hoax used to plunder its colonies”?
For a start, whatever British governments did from the 16th century onwards it was surely fortuitous that North America was settled largely by people largely from the British constitutional monarchy (1688) and not the Spanish, Portuguese, or French absolute monarchies.
It is unlikely that Richard Williams (of Anglo-Welsh descent?) would be able to write so despairingly about the running of, and the outcomes from, British colonies in North America. The Spanish and Portuguese colonies have not exactly performed as well, either economically or in terms of Liberty, as the former colonies performed when under British rule and since, when to a large extent, the institutional structures of the new Republic were formed from British theory (if not practice) in jurisprudence, moral philosophy, and civic justice.
Smith himself drew the favourable contrast between the state of affairs in the British colonies in America and the state of affairs in India under the East India Company on the eve of the Rebellion (not that the ‘Indians’ in North America prospered well from the benefits of Liberty any more than the Indians under The Company did any better).
But for ‘Free Trade to be a Hoax’ it would require some serious conspiracy naivety to link this to Adam Smith.
His historical observations in jurisprudence and his writings of a commercial society were largely ignored and were not implemented by British governments. Free trade remained an idea and not an actuality; he didn’t think a fully free trade society was likely ever to occur because of the need for some tariffs to raise revenue for government (there was no income tax in Britain while Smith was alive), and without customs revenue, governments would not function in their essential duties of defence, justice, public works and public institutions that facilitated trade (as the USA soon found out).
His last paragraph in Wealth Of Nations was to recommend that:
“Great Britain should free herself from the expence of defending those [colonial] provinces in time of war, and of supporting any part of their civil or military establishments in time of peace, and endeavour to accommodate her future views and designs to the real mediocrity of her circumstances’ (WN V.iii.92: p 947; Edwin Canaan, 1937 edition, p 900, Random House).
Unfortunately, but probably inevitably, his advice was disregarded by all British governments, despite the great opportunity that the loss of the British colonies presented them with, enabling them to abandon the goal of Empire, world roles of imagined glory and unilaterally assumed responsibilities, refrain from embarking on fresh continental wars and from keeping old colonies, Canada, Caribbean, and not to embark on adding new colonies (Australia, 1788), Africa, India and Asia, and continuing with an ever deeper mercantile political economy, all refuted by Smith in futile detail in Wealth Of Nations.
‘Free trade’ was never a ‘hoax’ on Smith’s part. His thinking was ignored in practice, though his memory is only lauded in a theory he did not condone. That is measure of the British national tragedy right into the 21st century.
Labels: Adam Smith no ideologue, Adam Smith's Legacy, Education Provision, Friedrich List, Government Interventions, Mandeville, Thomas Jefferson
posted by Gavin Kennedy at 8:59 PM
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