Freedom and the Machine: Technological Criticisms in Adam Smith’s Thought

Abstract

In conversations surrounding technology and the future of politics, Adam Smith is a valuable resource for evaluating the subtle relationship between technology and freedom. Smith explores the tendency of specialization occasioned by the advancement of machines to cause “mental mutilation” where the worker’s human faculties are stunted through overspecialization or narrowing of scope of opportunities to judge. Smith’s treatment of the development of sympathetic judgment as necessary to the practice of liberty illuminates the depth of the harms caused by this mutilation; it is the very freedom of the worker that is at stake when the development and the exercise of judgment are restricted. Taken together, Smith’s discussion of the advancement of machines and free and independent judgment can aid contemporary thinkers in understanding the relationship between technology and freedom in commercial society, particularly if new technologies substitute for the judgment of the worker or prevent the development of their judgment.