Adam Smith. What He Thought, and Why it Matters

Adam Smith and the Neo-Liberal Paradigm: On the Essential Nature of Trust, and Rebalancing Capital

“…As noted in the Introduction, Smith is often caricatured as the high priest of modern capitalism as in the NLP. Underlying this view is: …what really matters is economics: Culture is irrelevant……alongside this has sat the idea that much of politics, sociology, anthropology and the like are ultimately derivative and reducible to economics (Norman, 2018).…”

“…Many consider the salient failures of the NLP, and the need for the kind of radical reform described in the Financial Times quote, as resulting from the central tenets of Adam Smith's view of laissez-faire capitalism (a term not in Smith's writing). The following quote from Norman (2018) amply captures this perspective:…”

Adam Smith's moral foundations of self‐interest and ethical social order

“…On the other hand, Smith was concerned with extreme economic inequality, and he was critical of the old feudal institutions that allowed the consolidation of property such as inheritance laws, primogeniture and entails, which were used to tie up land for generations and increase inequality (Norman, 2018). Smith unequivocally identified the institutions that protected the property rights of the landed gentry as a key reason why Western Europe had significantly slower growth rates than countries such as America with a free market for land acquisition and ownership, because tied‐up land in Europe was not used for productive purposes.…”

“…The issue of greed has become particularly relevant in the twenty‐first century, when society's focus on individualism and laissez‐faire is said to have contributed to the global financial and economic crisis of 2008 that led to people losing their jobs, homes, and even their lifelong savings (Etzioni, 2015), and to their willingness to achieve their desired ends whatever the cost or the damage to others (Mussel et al, 2018; Veselka et al, 2014). Norman (2018) in his intellectual biography on Adam Smith further views greed as an underlying cause of the emergence of ‘crony capitalism’ that can be considered an economic and political environment in which pursuing and obtaining government favours is a part of everyday life for succeeding in business (Macey, 2014). Cronyism, rent seeking by businesses, and morally questionable executive behaviour have become increasingly commonplace even in market economies, although this is less pronounced than in some non‐market or developing economies 1 .…”

‘Plundering the Liberal Philosophical Tradition’? The Use or Abuse of Adam Smith in Parliament, 1919–2023

“…As contemporary accounts of Smith's importance (e.g. Liu, 2022;Norman, 2019) note, there is considerable difference in how Adam Smith was conceptualised in 1919, when we begin our examination of mentions in the Commons, and how Smith is seen in 2022. At the end of World War 1, Smith's thoughts and his contribution to classical economics were well known to academics (e.g.…”