2023-06-05 08:03:02
Who better than Adam Smith to refute Adam Smith, or rather what has been done with him?
It will be 300 years since Monday that was born, on June 5, 1723, in the small port and trading town of Kirkcaldy, in Scotland, the man who many consider to be the “father of economic science”, if not downright the “father of capitalism”. We owe him well-known economic concepts such ashomo economicuslaissez-faire economics, division of labor, free trade and the famous invisible hand… Or not.
“Smith was never a capitalist, he did not discover capitalism and he did not praise capitalism,” writes in the very first lines of a new book on the subject, coming this fall in Quebec, Thierry Pauchant, ethical management specialist and honorary professor at HEC Montréal. “The ‘Adam-Smith-father-of-capitalism’ narrative has been manufactured. It is often told to legitimize predatory capitalism, yesterday and today. It’s an intellectual heist. »
As the main interested party is no longer there to explain himself, we must return in particular to his monumental The Wealth of Nationsor rather Researches on the nature and causes of the wealth of nationswhich all economists know and which many of them still cite today whenever they need an intellectual authority to support their arguments, but which very few have actually read, said in interview everyday scottish The Herald University of Glasgow expert Craig Smith (no relation) late last year.
Published in 1776, this work had however been preceded, in 1759, by another brick, much less known to economists, entitled: Theory of Moral Sentimentswhich had already made Adam Smith famous, in England as elsewhere in the world, to which he would return to make improvements until the end of his life in 1790, at the age of 67.
A moral philosopher
“Adam Smith is not an economist in the sense we understand it today, this science has not yet been invented, but a moral philosopher. He is witness to transformations that are not yet the industrialization that we associate with capitalism”, explains in an interview with the Duty Till Düppe, professor of the history of economic thought at the University of Quebec in Montreal.
More intuitive and descriptive than theoretical and ideological, his writings are inspired by ancient philosophy and are part of a period of intellectual ferment, called the Scottish Enlightenment, which sought in particular to describe the major stages of human civilization. An excellent communicator, Adam Smith often takes up ideas that have already been put forward by others and, as a good philosopher, he embraces the broad spectrum and is both complex and vague enough to lend itself to different interpretations.
Very early in history, he will be made to say one thing and its opposite, especially in the United States, has noted in a recent book by Harvard University social science professor Glory Liu. Adam Smith indeed denounces British colonialism, but also slavery. He praises the virtues of free trade, but realizes that one can prefer to do business within the borders of his country and understands this.
Adam Smith is not an economist in the sense we understand it today, this science has not yet been invented, but a moral philosopher. He is witness to transformations that are not yet the industrialization that we associate with capitalism.
Right-wing kidnapping
But it was primarily the Chicago School neoliberalists, like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, who in the last century made the so-called “father of capitalism” a fond reading for conservative right-wing politicians. like former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. In their hands, the philosopher becomes “a mascot” of corporate laissez-faire, a defender of the smallest governments possible, explains Glory Liu.
They are the ones who made Smith say that individuals were rational actors seeking only to maximize their economic interest, whereas the Scot spoke much more generally of people wanting to secure the best future for themselves and their loved ones while remaining friendly fellow citizens. They were the ones who pretended not to understand that one of Smith’s great reproaches to the governments of his day was for allowing big business to profit from monopolies and failing to notice that he was entrusting the State a multitude of responsibilities, including the development of collective infrastructure, supervision of banks, control of the price of basic necessities, education for all and public health.
It is also these people who have deliberately left aside all the evil that their champion said of these rich too rich, and all the importance he attached to the conditions of development of the most deprived, denounces in turn Thierry Appearing in interview at Duty. They are also the ones who, trying so hard to make him say that economic laissez-faire was the best way to ensure the efficient use of production resources, raised the metaphor of the “invisible hand” to an almost divine rule, whereas that it is mentioned only three times, and with different meanings, in the approximately 1.3 million words contained in all of his work.
Some have concluded that there was an “Adam Smith on the left” and an “Adam Smith on the right”, the former being found mainly in the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the second in The Wealth of Nations. Others argue that these labels of left and right did not yet exist in his time, and that the moral philosopher’s apparent contradictions stem from the richness, complexity, and nuance of his thought.
A man of his time
Beyond the more or less great intellectual honesty of those who present themselves as the heirs of Adam Smith, certain disagreements to which he gives rise illustrate the importance of taking into account the historical context in which his work was produced, observes Till Duppe. The controversy over the meaning to be given to it comes, according to the expert, at a time when economic science lends itself less than before to major debates between opposing theoretical and ideological models and more to specialized empirical research rooted in the real.
The debate on the meaning of Adam Smith’s work is not only theoretical and historical, argues Thierry Pauchant for his part. Not only was the Scot wrongly used as a moral guarantee for many of the excesses of capitalism that we still suffer today, but he might also be an antidote.
At a time when the value of individuals often continues to be summed up in their economic usefulness, the moral philosopher speaks of their more general quest for well-being, he points out. While the inequalities of wealth are widening, we have this author who insists on the importance of ensuring the conditions for the development of everyone, including the most modest. While economic priorities are constantly pitted once morest the imperatives of the green transition, the so-called “father of capitalism” was already pleading in his time for development in harmony with his environment and nature.
The 200e anniversary of the publication of The Wealth of Nations in 1976 gave rise to a reissue of all of Adam Smith’s work which was to trigger the questioning of the interpretations which had been made of it by the neoliberals, recalls Thierry Pauchant. “It would be necessary that the celebrations of its 300e birthday make it possible to draw on his teachings to accelerate the shift towards a broader and more sustainable conception of human development. »
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