I’m reading a really good book, right now, a new biography of Adam Smith, titled, naturally enough, Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life, by Nicholas Phillipson. I’m only about a quarter of the way through it, so I can’t give a real review, but so far it is a model biography: well written, smart, learned without being oppressive, and above all remarkable in the way it rescues this thinker from the caricture of a Galtian icon that the market fundamentalists of the right would have him be.
In fact, there’s a passage early on that captures beautifully what the Randian and Tea-Party right (which is to say, the entire Congressional GOP, functionally at least) don’t get about what underpins the wealth and long term health of nations. In it Phillipson talks about the roots of Smith’s ideas about the way the social world works — or must, if groups of humans are to prosper both materially and morally (two categories always intertwined in Smith’s ideas about human relations). Discussing Smith’s education in the small-town school of his childhood and youth, Phillipson writes that Smith was being taught to cultivate
…the ability Robert Burns was to characterize so brilliantly as seeing ourselves as others see us.
Which capacity leads to an approach to life lived in the company of others in which it would be not just possible, but valued to
exchange the company of cronies for the friendship of strangers who belonged to different walks of life….The company of strangers would teach one to moderate one’s own prejudices and would give one more ‘extensive’ views of the world. It would encourage tolerance, taste, judgment and a respect for that sense of propriety that played such an important part in securing the decencies and pleasures of ordinary life…
The suggestion that exchange — not of goods but of thoughts and conversation — between strangers is an essential element in the forging of a livable life in an increasingly mass-society proved, Nicholson argues, enormously valuable to the young Smith, as it…
…gave him a way of viewing human beings as agents whose lives and happiness depend on their ability to cultivate the moral and intellectual skills they need to live sociably, at ease with themselves, with other and the world. They encouraged him to think of self-command as the essential skill on which sociability, success and personal happiness depends….
Smith wrote Moral Sentiments long before he completed The Wealth of Nations. The latter did not supercede the former; rather it was built upon the ideas Smith developed there about the ways in which a diverse society may endure the encounters of its disparate members.
__
To me, there’s an almost perfect hint to the diagnosis of what ails our Palin-esque friends (and all those who use the marvelously consuming force of her crazy to obscure their own): what we find there seems a photo-negative opposite to the notions above, that which Smith was absorbing to serve as the foundation for his theory of happy and prosperous social life.
Consider this a belated Robert Burns/Scottish Enlightenment open thread…
…and if I may attach just a bit of a programming announcement, if you want to hear my perfect-face-for-radio-voice this evening, Jay Ackroyd and I will be talking about my book, Newton and the Counterfeiter; the NRA and its hatred of science; and a bit about the post here of a couple of days ago about the possibility of new web-video undermining the hold of Big Cable on TV opinion mongering. Digressions are always possible, and given who’s talking, almost guaranteed.
Time: 9 p.m. EST at Blog Talk Radio, with the chance to take part in the “studio” audience in Second Life at the Virtually Speaking theater.
Image: Adolph von Menzel, Weekday in Paris, 1869
Maude
Tell me this post went off for a minute.
I did read, a long time ago, Wealth of Nations. I didn’t find it boring.
Downpuppy
Sounds like what yer sayn is: Adam Smith never bowled alone.
Tom Levenson
@Maude: Yup. I was having multiple fywp experiences. My first attempt to post had this slotting into the archives of about three days ago.
Sorry for the discombobulation.
J
Thanks for the tip, TL. I’ve long suspected that Adam Smith, and many of the other heroes claimed by the libertarian right, would have found most present day libertarians repellent and absolutely loathed Ayn Rand and everything she stands for.
slag
I don’t know if this constitutes an exchange of thoughts and conversation, but I found this documentary about Skateistan fairly provocative: http://www.youtube.com/v/olkvWSjbQZQ?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0. It’s probably thoroughly ethnocentric of me, but I kind of look at skateboarding as a modern American activity. And to see it being actively exported to Afghanistan made the divide between our countries seem slightly smaller for a moment. That’s kind of nice.
On the other hand, maybe I’m just getting tired of all the bickering.
asiangrrlMN
Cool. Your Second Life link doesn’t work, though.
My brother has made the transition from Republican (voted twice for W.) to a self-proclaimed Democrat (I’m so proud!), and for the first time, he actually cares about what’s going on in my life. Coincidence? I think not. It’s a basic philosophical difference between the two ideologies.
jl
Ok, now the comments section to this post is working. WP mess up, my PC, or did the poster push the wrong button?
Anyway, it’s fixed.
Thoughtful economists, even founders of the the ‘Chicago School’ have known this for a long time. Example is Jacob Vinor (edit: Jacob Viner).
If one bothers to read the whole Weatlth of Nations, the contrast between Smith’s approach and the conceptual and moral quagmire of much of the U.S. free market fanatic school is obvious.
Some examples.
Education. Smith worried that division of labor would produce boring work that produced ignorant dull witted population incapable of engaging fully in civic affairs. That is one of the reasons he supported freely available education (at least up until university). Contrast that attitude with the all too common view that if workers do not need education to fulfill their roles as mindless consumption machines, then we should just get rid of the inefficient education. You can find a little literature claiming that there is ‘too much education’ for economic efficiency.
Free Trade. Smith was certainly all for free trade, but warned that movement towards free trade must consider its effect on, and fate of, valuable productive capital that would be displaced. Contrast that to the all too common modern approach that simply advocates for ‘total free trade now’ no matter what the actual laws say about free trade as opposed to crony corporate deals and rent seeking, and dismisses all and any negative consequences as salutory ‘creative destruction’.
Interest rates: Smith had a careful analysis of the agency and asymmetric information problems involved in the supply and demand for loans in financial markets and the information content of interest rates. In fact reading it helps one get through the blizzard of formulas in the modern asymmetric information literature. Smith advocated what amounts to flexible usury laws for financial markets as a rememdy.
Corporate Influence. Smith worried about the political influence of joint stock companies on the rule of law and property rights in a country, and its effect in encouraging corporations to manipulate the law to facilitate rent seeking and appropriation of other productive surplus. Contrast that to an all too common attitude that if someone can get something somehow it must be optimal and efficient, especially if that someone has a pile of cash (as long as they are a for profit entity).
Some conservative schools of economic thought have known about Smiths subversiveness of free market fanaticism for some time. The Austrian School has long disliked Smith and it is not hard to find articles criticizing Smith from Austrian economists.
Tom Levenson
@asiangrrlMN: I think you are quite right — no coincidence at all. Galt-worship is solopsism; that’s the modern GOP (at least as it manifests itself in power). Lots of problems on the Dem side of the aisle, but to the extent that there are real philosophical markers that distinguish between the two parties, right now, the key lies with the Democrats’ insistence on the existence of a social compact in a society that is not merely 300,000,000 autonomous agents, invisibly handling themselves to deserved outcomes.
Sorry about the link; fixed now, I think.
jeffreyw
A wealth of kittehs.
jl
I don’t think many people read the whole damn Wealth of Nations. I don’t like thick books and Wealth of Nations is very thick. Took a long time, but I did eventually get through the whole thing. People should give it a shot, or at least skim it for the interesting bits.
Free version is on Project Gutenberg that you can download.
Tom Levenson
@jeffreyw: Ceiling and basement kitteh in one image – hmmmm.
asiangrrlMN
@Tom Levenson: The link works now. My brother has been pestering me for links to trusty lefty blogs because he has a winger friend who is parroting every GOP talking point. Any time he gives her opposing info, she dismisses it as lies. She takes what the GOP says as gospel and doesn’t want to hear dissension. I think for all the flaws on the left, there is in general more of a willingness to listen and to say, “Hey, maybe I don’t know everything.” Plus, the winger is only worried about her bottom line, which the GOP exploits for all they can. She can’t see that if society as a whole does better, she benefits from that as well.
@jeffreyw: Awwww! If Ceiling Cat and Basement Kitteh can get along, can’t we all?
@jl: Hey. How you be?
Jim, Once
@asiangrrlMN
Exactly. I find my right-wing BILs an SILs are so isolated from simple human companionship. They are good, well-meaning people who, when they are in the company of other loving, well-meaning family members who profoundly disagree with their ideas, do listen and do arrive at a new ‘approach.’ Thank you for this, Tom. I’m looking forward to reading An Enlightened Life.
BTW – I’ve had a terrifically rich reading experience on the blogosphere tonight. This posting was the perfect culmination. Others I’ve read in the last half hour:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/values-at-davos_b_815112.html
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ Look for “National Greatness Liberalism”
slag
@asiangrrlMN:
Ha! Awesome!
Maude
@asiangrrlMN:
Sorta OT, are we allowed to bring out the rusty pitchfork or is it now a no no?
@Tom Levenson:
I thought it was something like that. I have been around too many crazy people as of late and sometimes it has a leftover vibe.
I will download Wealth and skim it.
Mark S.
@asiangrrlMN:
Tell your brother to quit hanging out with Makewi.
nancydarling
Tom, Here is a wonderful quote from “Crow and Weasel” by Barry Lopez. Sorry I don’t know how to block it:
“I would ask you to remember only this one thing,” said Badger. “The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other’s memory. This is how people care for themselves. One day you will be good story-tellers. Never forget these obligations.”
I keep a few extra copies of the book as it is a wonderful gift for ages 8 and up. I just mailed one to an adult friend yesterday. The illustrations are exquisite and authentic to the tribes they represent. Since you care for art a lot, you might enjoy them
Lopez’ non-fiction books include ” Arctic Dreams” and “Of Wolves and Men”. The guy is a mensch and was Moyer’s sole guest on his last broadcast last April. It’s worth an hour to listen to it. He is one of my heroes and admonishes us to keep leaning into the light in spite of all that goes on in the world.
Tom Levenson
Testing: Are these comments working now?
SiubhanDuinne
@Tom Levenson 7:58 p.m.
Bipartisanship. David Broder would be proud.
asiangrrlMN
@slag: If not, then I am rooting for Basement Kitteh.
@Maude: Yes. It would be uncivil. I still bring it along as a conversation starter, though.
@Mark S.: But my brother LIKES pie.
burnspbesq
The “Adam Smith” that Republicans worship has very little to do with the real thing.
Chris
Hard to remember now, but not so long ago historically, free-market capitalism was in lockstep with liberalism. Part of the logic was that free trade between countries was supposed to break down barriers and help make nations so coexistent and inter-dependent that it would prevent war.
As much as conservatives can claim to be nothing but “classical liberals,” they’re simply not. It’s not just that Adam Smith never wanted capitalism to become dog-eat-dog objectivism (which he didn’t – supported progressive taxation and government regulation). He also hoped it’d be a beacon against the extreme nationalism and militarism that movement conservatives blindly follow.
I’m glad to see people reminded of that, however rarely, and suspect Smith would be too.
anonymous
@jl
Seconded on reading Wealth of Nations. I’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to break out Smith’s quote on how businessmen complain about high wages, but never about high profits.
Mike in NC
How do you say “Get of my damn lawn!” in Gaelic?
Chris
@burnspbesq:
That’s putting it mildly. Guess he can join Jesus Christ, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln (for starters) in the category of great men the GOP worships while working to destroy everything they stood for.
asiangrrlMN
@Tom Levenson: So, talk to me like I’m stupid. I have the blogtalkradio website up. Is it just going to start talking to me when it’s time for the show to start? Or do I have to download something/click a link/what?
jwb
@burnspbesq: Hell, the Reagan the Republicans worship has little to do with the real thing.
asiangrrlMN
Ahhhhh, cellos. I love cellos. My computer is speaking at me! Ooooooh. Let’s see if Tom IRL sounds like he sounds in my head. Yes! He does. Funny.
Pb
Blogtalkradio should just start talking to you, but if not… here’s a link to it again… And, hi from Second Life, also…
Zelma
Some years ago I taught an online ‘great books’ course to students who were seeking a master’s degree in that amorphous subject, “Leadership.” It was called “Leadership and the Social Sciences.” I chose to assign a collection of Adam Smith’s works by Heilbronner. It included one-third from “Theory of Moral Sentiments” and two-thirds from “Wealth of Nations.” What I found interesting (and encouraging) was the ability of these students to understand that the two books were intimately related and that Smith was most interested in the ways that human beings best live together. And they were, if anything, more interested in “moral sentiments” and how that might apply to the lives and careers they hoped to achieve.
I too have read “Wealth of Nations” and I too have long been amazed at the way so-called free-marketeers mis-use and mis-interpret his argument. Smith himself would be appalled by their use of his insights to support their inhumane and anti-social positions.
Tattoosydney
Tom, you write such lovely prose. Always a pleasure.
Sorry for the long post – I got typing and got excited.
I’ve just been reading The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, based on a recommendation from the last book thread.
It’s a quite lovely book about a cholera outbreak in Broad Street in London in 1854. It describes the course of outbreak in horrible detail, and gives a great sense of the (perceived) randomness of the deaths, the terror that that imparted to the entire community because no one knew whether they would be next, and what life was like in the ordinary residential areas of London. There’s also a good discussion at the end of the challenges of building mega cities (of which London was arguably the first example ), in dealing with an unprecedented number of poor people with an infrastructure built many years ago for a tenth of the population.
The book is lovely because the author very skillfully combines the stories of Dr John Snow (who had the radical idea that cholera might be caused by drinking water rather than poisonous miasmas) and the Reverend Henry Whitehead, the local curate. Initially Whitehead strongly rejected Snow’s theory. However, Snow collaborated with Whitehead and, using Whitehead’s detailed knowledge of the local community, they created statistics and analysis which convinced Whitehead and, slowly, everyone else that it was bugs in the water not goblin fumes.
These men believed that they could communicate ideas to each other, discuss those ideas, then get more information and thus have a more informed debate, and perhaps make a more informed decision.
They also believed that they might perhaps be able to improve society as a whole by reducing the level of the massive and random terror that pervaded human existence for all of human history before about 1982.
The wingnuts don’t understand any of that discussion about betterment of society random death is bad blah blah mumblecakes shit. That is, unless it’s a discussion about giving them more power over money and people’s genitalia.
The thing that struck me most reading your post, in the light of the Johnson book, was the strength of Snow and Whiteheads’ conviction that they as wealthy men, and the government as well, should work together towards securing those “decencies and pleasures of ordinary life” for everyone and, in particular, for the poor. Christian charity, government investment and such bollocks. The plebs also, it seems to me, believed on the whole that government should do something about grinding poverty – perhaps “hoped” is a better word.
Sure, their governments were crap at actually doing anything, and when they did it was usually wrong and based on a belief in carbolic smoke balls or snail-flavoured ginger beer. However, in a world where you could wake up tomorrow with explosive likely-fatal diarrhoea and everyone you have ever loved dead overnight, a lot of people believed in … doing good.
Wingnuts don’t want to do good. They have evil snake eyes and barren souls.
Dickheads.
/has vague apostophe doubt about Snow and Whiteheads’
Uloborus
@Chris:
I blame the Church. Find a quote from an authority that sounds like it backs up whatever it is you want to believe. Done. Your point is proven. Context is irrelevant. It’s classical Catholic philosophical technique, and modern fundamentalism is just agog for it.
asiangrrlMN
@Pb: Ta! It did start talking at me. Then, it crashed just as Tom was getting to the interesting part (NRA), so I missed a bit of that.
Tom, great job on the going green and the NRA parts.
Tom Levenson
Sorry for dropping out of the thread — but I had to check into Blog Talk Radio early to make sure that all our lovely toys worked OK.
@nancydarling: Barry Lopez was one of the people who first got me writing about the environment in particular. Winter Count was my favorite.
@Mike in NC: Nach Mach Feagle?
(failed attempt to channel Pratchett from memory.)
@Zelma: Lovely to hear that the students got into their Enlightenment head. That’s the great thing about actually reading. When you do, things change. (Hint, hint, my Wingnut friends.)
My favorite not-quite-meaningless factoid is that in the first three months of 1776 Tom Paine published Common Sense Gibbon published The Decline and Fall... and Smith put out The Wealth of Nations. That was a blockbuster season, right?
@Tattoosydney:
The John Snow story si a great one, and Johnson tells it very well indeed. But what makes me sadder and more frustrated is not that some people have no desire to do good — it is that they believe they can do good, or rather lead good lives (in the sense of well-lived ones) without the Smith virtue of sociability. It is that idea of sufficiency in isolation that is so narrowing — and so destructive of civil society.
Tom Levenson
@asiangrrlMN: Thanks. The gun stuff makes me crazy.
Tattoosydney
@Tom Levenson:
So, like, swear words are out then?
/A writer at the Daily Dish
Tattoosydney
@Tom Levenson:
And I suspect this is why you write elegantly, and I don’t but say “dickhead” a lot.
asiangrrlMN
@Tom Levenson: I know. It seems like a no-brainer, especially when looking at the stats and such that reasonable gun laws lead to less gun-related tragedies. Why does this have to be such a taboo thing to think, let alone say?
ETA: In addition, I get frustrated that you have to add your bona fides, as it were. “My grandfather used guns” and whatnot. That’s how far to the right the conversation has been shifted. Anyone who doesn’t like guns (like me, for example), has absolutely no credibility on the subject.
James E Powell
Tom Friedman finds it best to exchange ideas and values when he talks with cab drivers. David Brooks gets the same thing when he travels to small towns and imagines what the people who live there think and feel. Most rich people, however, are too busy being producers to mix with the working class. If the rich want to know what poor people think, they just read whatever Sarah Palin says.
Shadow's Mom
For my Philosophy of Public Administration class, I am reading Camilla Stivers, Governance in Dark Times. She discusses US political thought and actions between 9/11 and 2008 (so focused wholly on the Bush administration).
She references Hannah Arendt in chapter 4 in discussing the importance of restoring an engaged and thinking public to political discourse. She cites Arendt’s belief in three building blocks for effective public discourse; thinking and judging in order to develop opinions. I found the following statements illuminated my understanding of my perceptions about failings in our current political discourse.
The right wing and the firebaggers seem to have forgotten the part about imagining other viewpoints. Putting oneself into the perspective of the anti-abortion activist or the Wall Street capitalist may seem distasteful, but if we cannot grasp their perspective I think that we cannot hope to inform our own effectively.
Eunoia
What does Galtian mean? It’s not in my dictionary.
rickstersherpa
@Mike in NC: I enjoyed this post quite a bit, including the digression into the writings of Barry Lopez (Notre Dame, Class ’66).
Robert Burns did not write in Gaelic, he wrote in “Scots,” which is a dialect of English, as well as standard English. A radical as opposed to a liberal, Burns was an egalitarian and “leveler.”
One of the favorite little blogs I like to travel to from time to time is hosted by Professor Gavin Kennedy, University of Edinburgh, called “Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy” http://www.adamsmithslostlegacy.com/. One of Professor Kennedy’ s particular peeves is the metaphor “Invisible Hand,” which a metaphor that Smith used once in TMS, once in WoN, and once in his last postuhumous publication, “History of Astronomy” (18th century intellectuals apparently had broad interests), is misused to justify the workings of the market economy to create the “best of all possible worlds” (to steal a phrase that is very ironically used from another 18th Century master, Voltaire ).
PanurgeATL
@Eunoia:
“Galtian” means “having to do with John Galt, the hero of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged“. If you’ve ever seen a “Who Is John Galt” [1] bumper sticker, that’s the one.
—
[1] (Answer: “Not you.”)