Separation of Church and State

Lee Randall, interviews the co-author of ‘God is Back, How the Global Rise of Faith is Changing the World’, by John Micklethwait (editor of The Economist) and Adrian Wooldridge, Allen Lane (Penguin), in The Scotsman, 19 May, HERE:

“Keeping the faith”

“BACK in 1843, James Wilson, a hat maker from Hawick, founded The Economist, partly to serve as a mouthpiece for his campaign on behalf of free trade. As the magazine's website explains, he shared a special affinity with the economic philosophies of another notable Scot, Adam Smith. I've cornered [John-Micklethwait] to discuss his latest book [God is Back], which explores the interplay between God and politics.

God is Back [is] a thought-provoking exploration of the global rise of faith is changing the world ... the book's chief argument is that in order to understand the politics of the 21st century, you cannot afford to ignore God whether you're a believer or not.

Micklethwait is Catholic, his co-author an atheist:

"Our book is the latest stage of an argument that began in Edinburgh, between David Hume and Adam Smith. Hume favoured an established clergy that had been 'bribed into indolence', whereas Smith was keen to open up the religious marketplace to competition. He argued that you wouldn't get successful religion without competition, because established clergy are always bound to try less hard than people who have to battle for every soul."

The authors found that, at heart, man is fundamentally theocentric – given a chance to believe in God, we will do so. So although some Enlightenment thinkers saw religion as oppressive and unscientific – and prevailing wisdom, especially in Europe, held that as the world became more modern it would become more secular – Micklethwait discovered that instead, with modernity comes pluralism.

"You wind up with the ability to choose your faith, which is why we focus so much on America in the book. One in every four Americans changes faith – that's an amazing statistic. Pluralism also gives you the possibility to not be religious at all. What it does is forces you to make a choice."

The American and French Revolutions are key events, he argues. "The French took the line that the church was bound up with the state and so you couldn't have modern life without overthrowing it. That contrasts with the end of the American Revolution, when nobody felt it was particularly odd having religion around. Americans, in the main, have assumed that the two things can thrive together."

Indeed, America's Constitution, along with the writings of Adam Smith, form the key texts required to understand the "competitive mechanism behind religion's revival", writes Micklethwait. "The First Amendment – 'that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof' – was actually a compromise between dissenters (who wanted to keep the state away from religion) and more anticlerical sorts... (who wanted the church out of politics). Yet it became the great engine of American religiosity, creating a new sort of country where membership in a church was a purely voluntary activity."

Comment
To fully follow the argument you should use the link (my editing necessarily is severe).

Adam Smith on religion is a controversial subject, worsened by it being almost ignored, despite a long section on the organisation of religious institutions in Wealth Of Nations (Book V), alluded to in Micklethwait’s statements. He suggests that there was an ‘argument’ between Hume and Smith, but I would consider it more the presentation of two alternatives.

Hume, the public sceptic about the revealed religion, and all that went with it, of Christianity, favouring an established church because it could do less harm to free thinking than allowing overly enthusiastic little sects to proliferate and cause trouble if they succeeded, and Smith favouring the weakening of state-enforced beliefs by encouraging a ‘thousand sects’ to proliferate, no one of them large enough to disturb a community’s tranquillity.

It was really an empirical question for both of them; Scotland had a quasi-established church in the many Presbyteries that covered the land, of which the zealots in many of them ruthlessly hunted down whatever they considered to be ‘heresy’ (England, of course, had the Church of England in England and the Episcopalians in Scotland); on the fringes of both countries, there were little sects (Quakers among the most prominent), which conformed to Smith’s model to a small extent – they held sway over small groups of people, but did not overly dominate non-members – they were ostracised by the larger established churches and mainly ‘kept their heads down’.

I am not clear what Mickelthwait means by ‘The French took the line that the church was bound up with the state and so you couldn't have modern life without overthrowing it.’ Revolutions can be messy, but the French Catholic church survived, and survives, as an institution (the church in the French village I live in for part of the year was built in the 11th century).

What is clear that the separation of Church and State in France is absolute and not challenged as it is in the USA. In a recent dispute over the wearing of Muslim headscarves by some young girls to School, the President of France said ‘non’ firmly and quoted the separation of Church and State and its operation , for many years in matters with the Catholic Church. The revolution overthrew the State of Louis XVI, disconnecting the roles of Cardinals, but at grass roots the Church continued, until recently – there are not enough priests to hold mass in every local church.

The problem of state and church in revolutionary America was not a little influenced by the question: which religion could be established given the already fractionated churches in existence. The last thing the new state was religious strife in attempting to force on church on the rest. Hence, Smith’s idea of competing churches struck a chord.

Note: My paper, ‘Adam Smith’s Religiosity: a review of the evidence’ is now completed and will be presented to the History of Economic Society annual conference in Denver, Colorado, in June.

Lost Legacy Prize for April - Simply the Best

Pejman Yousefzadeh in the New Ledger HERE
writes ‘In Praise of Adam Smith’ and introduces me (for which my deepest thanks, to Karen Horn, writing in Standpoint online HERE:

‘Instead, the present global financial crisis has made the godfather of classical economics look strikingly irrelevant in comparison with Keynes, the inventor of modern disequilibrium theory. Even worse, now that bankers are being castigated as the incarnation of greed, blindness and irresponsibility, the man who wrote in his famous Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations that "it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker" - or perhaps the banker in our day - "that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest" is again accused of being the chief advocate of heartless laissez-faire capitalism, a system that failed and had to fail. In this view, capitalism is nothing but a false religion, with Mammon as its god and Smith as its high priest. Critics worry that markets need a moral foundation that they automatically erode. They ridicule the naïve belief that free markets bring everybody happiness at no cost, a conviction allegedly lacking all philosophical underpinnings.’

From this unpromising start Karen Horn knocks the socks of almost all commentators on the relevance of Adam Smith. I sat up and paid attention when I read her next sentence:

‘His deep persuasion was that simply observing reality enables us to discover the underlying natural principles. The Scottish Enlightenment thinkers aimed at shedding light on the laws governing human behaviour, and on their consequences for life in society.’

She continued amazing me with her understanding of Adam Smith (I am so used to media commentators talking nonsense about him):

‘Absent-minded he may have been, but naïve he wasn't, let alone a cynic. Smith did not tolerate immoral behaviour. It would never have occurred to him that selfishness and greed might be viewed as being just normal - and even less that they might be morally laudable, let alone negligible. This differentiates him from Thomas Hobbes, in whose view man is a wolf to other men, and also from Bernard Mandeville, well-known for his poem "The Fable of the Bees", in which he - half satirically, half seriously - claims that private vices result in public benefits. Smith strongly objected to this view. The proof of this attitude is his first widely recognised book, the Theory of Moral Sentiments, published on April 26, 1759-250 years ago.’

If you have not read, or understood, Smith’s Moral Sentiments, I recommend that you follow the link to Karen’s article. It’s by far the best short summary of Smith’s moral philosophy I have read for quite a while. She explains the ‘impartial spectator’ clearly. She also demolishes the so-called 'Das Adam Smith Problem:

‘It is true that almost two decades elapsed between the first publication of the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations. But Adam Smith never left it at the first editions of his works. Both books underwent numerous rewrites and additions until the end of Smith's life. He worked on them continuously and in parallel but never fundamentally changed his mind. His approach and the logical system that he built always stayed the same.’

I would add to this the fact that Smith’s Lectures in Jurisprudence [1762-63] carry verbatim much that was to appear in Wealth Of Nations, emphasising the continuity in his economics from his days at Glasgow before he met the French Physiocrats in 1764-6. These lectures were not available until 1896 when a manuscript of students’ notes were found in Oxford.

‘Smith's major works both take the same methodological route, using parallel premises and leading to analogous results. Smith's approach is typical of the empiricism that was in vogue during the Scottish Enlightenment. He describes meticulously that which is - and not so much that which should be. He looks at people's behaviour and tries to deduce universal laws from what he sees. Since man is a social animal, the observations focus on human interaction.’

Comment
I urge you to read Karen Horn’s article. It is too good to miss. And the sensible comments attached from readers are gems indeed. There is even a mention for a theme relevant something that I am working on at present for my paper on the ‘Alleged religiosity of Adam Smith':

‘Some scholars have attributed Smith's optimism to his alleged Deism. He seems to show a belief in a Creator who has endowed the world with certain natural laws accessible to human reason, but who refrains from intervening in the course of worldly events. True or false, this is no founding pillar of Smith's system. Smith places the individual dispositions and actions of men at the baseline of his analysis. If these dispositions and actions cannot be traced back to providence but are instead triggered by secular social learning or simply sheer evolution, this doesn't invalidate his logical result. The masterpiece that matters is the social co-ordination achieved through interaction, and the generation of useful institutions that channel life in human society.’

I couldn’t put it better myself. I have no hesitation in awarding Karen Horn the Lost Legacy Prize for the best article on Adam Smith for April 2009.

Brilliant Gem, But a Bit of Dross Too

Professor Mark J. Perry, a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan, writes Carpe Diem ('Professor Mark J. Perry’s Blog for Economics and Finance') and today’s post includes a gem and a dud (in the midst of a lively article, the overwhelming large part of which is excellent, but the dud bit tarnishes it).

First, here is yesterday’s gem, untarnished in its amusing brilliance, quoted by from The National Review, 22 January, by Bennett Owen:

And Grandpa provides yet another piece of political humor - the six miracles of socialism:
- There is no unemployment, but no one works.
- No one works, but everyone gets paid.
- Everyone gets paid, but there's nothing to buy with the money.
- No one can buy anything, but everyone owns everything.
- Everyone owns everything, but no one is satisfied.
- No one is satisfied, but 99 per cent of the people vote for the system.

I like that. Fifty-nine words worth more than a picture could paint or a thousand words could possible improve upon!

But now for the tarnished dud in the post:

“Giving Thanks for Capitalism, The Invisible Hand, the Miracle of the Free Market and No Turkey Czar”, HERE:

"You probably didn't call your local supermarket ahead of time and order your Thanksgiving turkey this year, did you? Why not? Because you automatically assumed that a turkey would be there when you showed up, and it probably was there when you showed up "unannounced" at the grocery store to select your bird.

And the reason your Thanksgiving turkey was waiting for you? Because of "spontaneous order," "self-interest," and the "invisible hand" of the free market - "the mysterious power that leads innumerable people, each working for his own gain, to promote ends that benefit many." Even if turkeys appear in grocery stores every Thanksgiving only because of the "selfish greed" or "corporate greed" of turkey farmers and/or supermarkets, it sure works for me.

In a 2003 Boston Globe column titled "Giving Thanks for Capitalism" (available only in the paid archives) Jeff Jacoby explains below why he is thankful for the miracle of the invisible hand that makes turkeys automatically available so efficiently at Thanksgiving:

“No turkey czar sat in a command post somewhere, consulting a master plan and issuing orders. No one forced people to cooperate for your benefit. And yet they did cooperate. When you arrived at the supermarket, your turkey was there. You didn't have to do anything but show up to buy it. If that isn't a miracle, what should we call it?

Adam Smith called it "the invisible hand" -- the mysterious power that leads innumerable people, each working for his own gain, to promote ends that benefit many. Out of the seeming chaos of millions of uncoordinated private transactions emerges the spontaneous order of the market. Free human beings freely interact, and the result is an array of goods and services more immense than the human mind can comprehend. No dictator, no bureaucracy, no supercomputer plans it in advance. Indeed, the more an economy *is* planned, the more it is plagued by shortages, dislocation, and failure."

It is commonplace to speak of seeing God's signature in the intricacy of a spider's web or the animation of a beehive. But they pale in comparison to the kaleidoscopic energy and productivity of the free market. If it is a blessing from Heaven when seeds are transformed into grain, how much more of a blessing is it when our private, voluntary exchanges are transformed - without our ever intending it - into prosperity, innovation, and growth?

As economist Steven Landsburg wrote in "Armchair Economics" about the invisible hand: "It is something of a miracle that individual selfish decisions lead to collectively efficient outcomes."

Comments
Apart from Adam Smith not ascribing the metaphor of ‘an invisible hand’ to markets, used only once in Wealth Of Nations in Book IV, but not at all when discussing how markets in commercial societies worked in Book I and II.

See my downloadable paper, “Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand: from metaphor to myth” (see Lost Legacy’s Home Page and follow the instructions).

The ascribing to ‘Heaven’ or God’s (is that the Judeo-Christian or the Muslim God?) direct intervention in procuring turkey dinners to a ‘miracle’, is pure nonsense (and, no doubt is offensive to those who buy drugs instead of turkeys and end up in the earthly version of hell).

Adam Smith did not call it "the invisible hand"; it may be a commonplace among some individuals “to speak of seeing God's signature in” markets by analogy with spider’s webs, but it is not a scientific explanation of what makes turkey farmers get up each morning and go to work of producing turkeys for Thanksgiving.

From the sublime to the avaricious, Professor Perry leaps to "selfish and corporate greed" as the explanation for turkeys turning up on the shelves for sale, and absolves those afflicted with these vices with the blessings of doing God’s business to “promote ends that benefit many”. There is no vice in seeking to buy what your family need for Thanksgiving from people willing to sell the means, so that they can feed and cloth their own families. Self-interest is not selfishness nor greed. It is a virtue.

But what a theological mess the introduction of God, heaven and miracles causes if the society requires selfishness and greed!

But the economist need not burden herself with this mumbo jumbo. Markets do not work on miracles – a flimsy force for sustainable food security – and an ahistorical perspective to boot.

Early humans, sitting around a small fire and in hunger, looked up when they heard the scavengers and gatherers returning to camp, bringing with them arms full of nutritious meat and marrow bones, plants, leaves and berries, and, in their pusillanimous superstition and credulity, they may have praised their stone or wooden sacred gods in their ‘thanksgiving’; but there was nothing sacred, or miraculous, about their good fortune.

The same processes which sent the scavengers and the gatherers out that morning and (may have) resulted in the successful search for food, are the same which sets the turkey farmers to work – if they don’t work, they don’t eat (or today, earn what enables them to do so).

Economists who resort to miracles, hand of god, and heavenly-providence type of non-explanations for markets, pander to their own smugness of keepiogn the truth to themselves, because without doubt, Professor Perry, and the many others who do so, are quite aware of how markets work (as did Adam Smith in Books I and II of Wealth Of Nations).

I think it better – and more respectful – if we economists tell ’em how it is, and not indulge in pandering to their credulity about pseudo-babble.

However, for reminding us about the six 'miracles' of socialism, Professor Perry is forgiven...