What Did Adam Smith Say About Self Love?

ROBERT A. BLACK

Houghton College

In Book I, Chapter 2 of the Wealth of Nations (WN), Adam Smith wrote what has become one of his most quoted passages:

Some commentators have found this passage offensive since it seems to prefer selfishness to benevolence. The passage seems also to contradict the theme of "sympathy" as the basis for moral judgments in Smith’s earlier text on moral philosophy, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS 1759). These apparent contradictions in Smith’s views on human nature comprise the "Adam-Smith problem" (see David Collard 1978, Robert Heilbroner 1982 and Glenn R. Morrow 1928): how can ethically oriented ideas of sympathy and self-command be reconciled with the pursuit of self interest?1

Recent commentators deal variously with Smith’s seemingly divergent views on human nature. Many ignore TMS and focus on the role of self interest in WN. Others, wishing to rehabilitate the economic role of ‘benevolence’, highlight the divergence as obviously contradictory and the emphasis on self interest as grossly overdone. A third group reconciles views with what might be called economic realism. A fourth group, composed mainly of historians of economic thought, attempts to reconcile Smith’s views with a synthesis.

Few of these commentators, however, consider precisely what Smith said in either the immediate context in Book I, Chapter 2, or the broader context of the passage. Not surprisingly, the passage tends to offend those who have first offended the sense of the passage most. Historians of economic thought such as Heilbroner (1982), Edwin West (1969), and Morrow (1928), though, begin a reconciliation with careful analysis of TMS as -es the two views by appealing to Smith’s tolerance for "inconsistencies" while Gary Becker (1989), Nathan Rosenberg (1990) and Piero Mini (1972) make other appeals to human realities.

What remains to be done is to analyze more carefully WN. Correct interpretation of the passage on "self love" requires closer examination of the exact wording of the text itself, the immediate context, and the broader context of the first two chapters of WN . Any interpretation must be reconciled with the preceding WN discussion of meeting one's own needs in a world of division of labor, complex production, and world-wide trade (WN, Bk. I, Chs. 1&2). Ironically, two of the great themes of WN, self-interested behavior and division of labor, while connected by Smith himself in his discussion of factors augmenting the wealth of a nation, are not usually treated together by the commentators on self love.

More importantly and more often ignored, the careful reader will find in Smith’s analysis that the "beggar" in WN and TMS is a unifying link between the two. Once the beggar’s role is properly understood, the statement about self love from WN can be reconciled more easily with statements about self-command and sympathy from TMS. Understanding the beggar leads to a more-favorable view of the market as a socializing device and provides a clear basis for evaluating the frequent uses by others of Smith’s famous statement.

Commentators’ Views of What Smith Said

Four groups of commentators are worth mentioning: (1) those who ignore sympathy in TMS and an economic role for benevolence, while focusing pragmatically on the "self love" of WN as the mainspring of economic activity; (2) those recognize a conflict between TMS and WN but who reject reliance on self-interest and emphasize an economic role for benevolence; (3) those economists who reconcile Smith’s views with candid realism; and (4) those historians of thought who synthesize Smith’s views on sympathy and self love. The first group will be dealt with briefly since it is of least interest here.

Whatever Adam Smith intended by expressing his two views of human nature, Amitai Etzioni (1988, p. 37) suggests that most economists have simply ignored Smith's discussion of sympathy in Theory of Moral Sentiments, and in that way have avoided the conflict. Many economists and other commentators on Smith are simply unaware of an "Adam-Smith problem". They accept the role of self love as they interpret it without knowing that Smith himself had made statements in TMS that would call a naive or extreme interpretation of the passage under study into question.

Etzioni is not among the first group. He joins the second group of commentators who understand the divergence of views in TMS and WN but who find the emphasis on self interest too strong. He is among those who wish to rehabilitate the role of benevolence in economic affairs and to balance Smith’s self love with sympathy. In his critical review of the history of the neoclassical economic model and the idea that self-interested maximizing behavior maximizes social welfare, Etzioni notes that, "The origins of the theorem go back to Adam Smith, who emphasized that the market as a system relies on each actor's pursuing his self-interest" (Etzioni 1988, p. 28). Etzioni returns attention to the conflict and to what he considers to be an overemphasis on the ‘me-first’ model of neoclassical economics. He would substitute a ‘deontological’ ethic, stressing moral duty, for the utilitarian ethic of self interest.

David Collard is also critical of theoretical reliance on self interest. Collard (1978) explains how economists have implicitly justified ignoring the conflicting views in TMS and WN. First, social interaction and civilized commerce do require a minimum of sympathy and all agree to play this cooperative game to a very limited extent. Next, assuming the necessary minimum of sympathy, the selfish motives dominate commerce and the determination of values, output and so on. Since social welfare requires no more than the minimum of sympathy, further discussions of sympathy belong to the field of ethics not economics. While critical of the view, Collard explains, "Sympathy was kicked downstairs to the infra-structure and upstairs to morality. The decks were then cleared for a political economy uncluttered by consideration of altruism" (1978, pp. 57).

Others besides Collard and Etzioni are also critical of an emphasis on self interest (although it is not clear that each is aware of an Adam-Smith problem). Claudio Katz (1997), for instance, compares "communitarian" and "democratic" criticisms of Smith’s view of the motivating role of self love. Preferring the democratic view, Katz concludes: "the central dilemma is [that] ... Smith’s doctrine raises a moral concern because it would strip the community of its authority to distribute the resources needed to guarantee a basic livelihood." (1997) A reading of TMS shows that the "community" view might well enter through the eyes and sympathy of the "impartial observer". The question of whether the impartial observer is present in WN could have bearing on Katz’s interpretation.

Hoping also to rehabilitate benevolence, Mark Lutz seems to grow more critical over time in his comments on Smith and self love. Lutz (1985) accepts the role of self interest as a motive for economic production and exchange in the early stages of developing a modern economy. Hoping to move past this early stage where self interest is predominant, he appeals to the hierarchy of needs: when lower-level needs are met, we can abandon an appeal to self-interest as the basis for society and begin to cultivate benevolence. Writing with Kenneth Lux in 1988, though, Lutz embraces a more critical view: "Adam Smith's celebrated proposition that we can expect our daily provisions from the butcher, the baker, and the brewer, thanks to their self-interest, loses force when it is found that large segments of the population are likely to go without their daily bread unless they are able to successfully appeal to public benevolence, namely, public welfare or charity. It was in terms of mass poverty and human degradation that Sismondi and Ruskin questioned the unalloyed wisdom of an economy relying on the springs of self-interest" (Lutz and Lux 1988: 77).

Some writers, appealing to economic realism, are equally blunt in accepting the role of self love over that of benevolence. Piero Mini (1972, p. 7) suggests that one resolution to the conflict over Adam Smith’s views is the frank admission that self-interest holds society together, not sympathy. Gary Becker (1989) and Nathan Rosenberg (1990) resolve the conflict by noting the scarcity of sympathy.

Amartya Sen (1997) solves any problem by an appeal to the realities of modern exchange that is more complex than a visit to the butcher’s or the baker’s shop. Sen claims that Smith did not intend this statement on self love to apply to "all economic activities"; instead it is "just an example of a case of pure exchange of commodities, for which the pursuit of self-interest entirely suffices as motivation." (1997) In the broader range of more complex operations of a market economy, trust and moral behavior will be necessary. This of course assumes that Smith’s passage on self love did not take for granted any trust between buyer and butcher or baker.

Jacob Viner (1928: 132) rejected any argument that "Smith was aware that he was abstracting from selected elements of the totality of human nature." Viner’s conclusion was that Smith’s stress on benevolence in TMS was by and large abandoned in WN, replaced by an emphasis on self interest, with the contrast of ideas remaining to the end of Smith’s life. Viner is a realist about the frailties of human reason, as is apparent when his views on Smith contrasted to the views of D. D. Rafael and A. L. MacFie.

Rafael and MacFie (editors of and authors of the introduction to TMS,1976, p. 20) are among those who find no contradiction in Smith's two works. They reject the view that Smith changed his views and insist that the apparent divergences must be synthesized. In fact, they note that the 6th edition of TMS was published in 1790, well after the first edition of WN, and they find that "Smith's account of ethics and human behavior is basically the same" in both editions. (1976, p. 20).

While understanding the timing of the last edition of TMS, Viner (1928: 138) does not demand any synthesis: "When Smith revised his Theory of Moral Sentiments, he was elderly and unwell. It is not altogether unreasonable to suppose that he had lost the capacity to make drastic changes in his philosophy, but had retained the capacity to overlook the absence of complete coordination and unity in that philosophy."the treatise on sympathy begins with an admission that every man, even the "greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without" pity or compassion. (Pt. I, Sect. I, Ch. I: 9)

Glenn R. Morrow (1928) and E. G. West (1969) prefer synthesis. Both appreciated and explained the links between sympathy in TMS and self love in WN . Yet both focus primarily on the context of TMS and only the general context of WN. While not in error, neither achieves clarity about how the beggar in Book I, Chapter 2 of WN and the beggar in TMS are helpful in reconciling the two texts.

Robert Heilbroner (1982: 427) comes closer. In his own words, he "develops more fully the insights of [Raphael and] MacFie that the economic man who is the active agent of the Wealth is the prudent man who is the product of the Theory." Heilbroner sees TMS as covering the conversion of primal man into socialized man by means of his exposure to censure and approval while WN picks up there and traces "social progress" due to the application of the "Institutions of Natural Liberty" and "freedom of contract" (1982: 434). Heilbroner correctly emphasizes that this conversion in Smith’s WN includes "progress" beyond the "self-reliance of a simpler age" (434). Like Lutz and Lux, though, Heilbroner remains concerned about the plight of the poor and the preference of others for social order "over the relief of the miserable by the systematic muting of our moral sensibilities" (1982: 439).

While Heilbroner does find the "beggar" twice in TMS, he seems unconcerned with the beggar of Book I, Chapter 2 of WN. The beggar in TMS is "despised" (Heilbroner 1982: 437; from TMS, 144) and, not "forgotten" by "providence", is nearly equal to the rich in "ease of body and mind" (Heilbroner 1982: 439; from TMS, 185). What Heilbroner does not discuss is how the pure beggar in WN (119) is accommodated somewhat unevenly over time and is therefore in an economic position inferior to those who participate in mutual exchange until he himself participates in exchange.

Nathan Rosenberg (1960: 557) finds a synthesis of Smith’s views in an often "ignored" duality in Smith’s work, the analysis "of the conflicting forces which impel the human agent to action." Joseph Cropsey (1975) also found in WN and TMS a dual view of human behavior: "man can be described, according to Smith, as being by nature altruistic and egoistic--a species-member moved by love of self and fellow feeling with others." (1975: 138) For Smith, the interesting question (which Rosenberg highlights) is which social institutions will allow the "market system [to] operate most effectively" (1960: 569).

What is striking about the variety of ideas on Adam Smith’s reference to the "self love" of the "butcher, the brewer or the baker" is that many of them seem to show no appreciation for the full sense of what Smith was saying about "self love". Moreover, the commentators most offended by this passage seem to be those least familiar with the precise form of the text, its immediate context, or its place in the development of chapters one and two of Book I of WN. Even those without a quarrel with Smith do not generally seem to place the idea clearly in its immediate context.

Although the dichotomy in Smith’s views on human nature may be stronger elsewhere in WN, no actual contradiction appears in this passage on the butcher, brewer, and baker. Lutz (1985) notwithstanding, the full context seems to oppose any notion that, in a modern society where low-level consumer needs are met, an appeal to self interest is dispensable.

What Smith Said about Self Love: the Context

Few casual readers of Smith’s WN recall that his comment on self love in Book I, Chapter 2, follows hard on the heels of a comment about the spaniel fawning before its owner. Nor do they probably understand the connection among these two ideas and earlier stories about the "day-laborer’s woolen coat" or the "pin manufactory" (pp. 109-110). This is understandable given the normal reader’s method of ‘touring’ old texts written when time was less scarce. When touring London, the visitor generally stops to view Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, or the other familiar spots. The visitor does not, however, fully understand England without a broader tour through the English city and countryside or through English history.

When touring the Wealth of Nations, the reader stops to view passages on Smith’s "pin factory", "baker, brewer, and butcher", or other familiar quotes. The reader does not fully understand Smith, however, without touring the surrounding text--the context--or the historical setting of WN, to be found in TMS. As E. G. West has noted, WN "was an original attempt to produce a comprehensive economic system" (1969: 168); it should be examined as a whole rather than in small parts. Writers such as Bill Shaw (1997: fn 5), MacKenzie (1987), Amartya Sen (1987), Emil Kung (1985), and Milton Myers (1983) recognize the context’s importance but none seems to give an adequate statement of it.

What did Adam Smith really say about self love? The text has been quoted in the introduction above but the immediate context--the preceding paragraphs of Book I, Chapter 2--and the broader context--Book I, Chapter 1--reveal more precisely what Smith was saying. What is needed is to map the lesser known ideas in WN which lead to the more popular passage about self love.

In the first two chapters of Book I of WN, Smith examines the following four themes: (1) division of labor has led to increased productivity (the pin factory); (2) division of labor has also increased the complexity of production (the day laborer’s woolen coat); (3) human activity tends toward exchange, unlike the animals (the "propensity to truck and barter" compared to the apparent cooperation of the racing greyhounds); (4) specialization and complexity in production affect the way in which we are able to meet our needs (the spaniel and his master versus our relation to the butcher, brewer, and baker); and (5) the beggar is able to meet some needs but not all in a timely fashion. These ideas form a unit when evaluating what Smith said about self love. They work in concert with Smith’s idea from TMS that human behavior is capable of self love and sympathy, not one or the other.

In Book I, Chapter 1, Smith first shows how specialization and division of labor and consequent improvements in machinery multiply labor’s productive power and lead to increased exchange and improving living standards. In his own words:

Smith’s "pin manufactory" illustrates the source of increases in labor’s productivity. His extended reference, found near the end of the chapter, to the "woolen coat" illustrates that the division of labor leads to a complex system of production and exchange. Provision of even the simplest item can involve thousands of people at diverse times and places. A long quote from WN will illustrate the exaggerated extent to which Smith went to make the point:

Dramatic overemphasis in this passage was surely intended and the conclusion was clear: even in Smith’s day, production and exchange were quite complex, even for items consumed by those living at lower levels of income.

A major theme of Book I, Chapter 2, is whether and to what extent humans and animals are able to meet their needs either through mutual exchange, individual activity, or begging. Animals are restricted to independent effort or to begging. Those in the wild are always independent, but humans cooperate and their "propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another" is a uniquely human tendency. Greyhounds running a rabbit may seem to work together but they don’t trade bones. Smith does allow that domesticated animals may obtain their needs from humans but not through trade:

Like a spaniel, man may beg too but Smith also explains the difficulty of meeting our needs and wants by appealing to benevolence--we would spend too much time pleading and begging:

What Smith Said about Self Love: the Text Again

We come now to the initial mention of self love in WN, Book I, Chapter 2. Smith asserts the superiority of exchange over begging:

Contrary to Etzioni’s (1988) critique, Smith’s analysis does not necessarily present a "too-narrow psychology" of economic man. Smith was "much more aware than most of his successors of the complex motives in human life" (West 1969: 82). His butcher, brewer, and baker can be benevolent or self interested but society gains when we mutually meet one another’s needs rather than beg for our own needs. Phillips (1997), while not addressing the beggar, recognizes the emphasis here on mutual benefits of exchange.

That begging (rather than some poorly defined ideal of mutual benevolence) is the main alternative being criticized in this passage is clear from the very next several sentences:

Begging does not fully suit the beggar himself. Gifts are lumpy while consumption is smooth. Too many gifts of clothing one month and too much food another lead the beggar to abandon benevolence and resort to an appeal to the self love of others. While we may occasionally gain the benevolence of those we know, we cannot depend constantly on their benevolence, much less on the benevolence of those we have never met who work at a distance in time or space.

What, then, did Adam Smith say about self love? The full context shows that he did not encourage the butcher, brewer, and baker to be more selfish. The perspective is not that of the shop keeper at all but that of the beggar or customer standing in need of food and drink. Efforts to convince the shopkeepers to be more benevolent do not violate the sense of this passage for it is directed toward the customer: you will be more able to meet your needs if you appeal to self-interest rather than to the benevolence of others.

Had Smith taken the perspective of the shop keepers, he might well have written: it is not from the benevolence of the customer that the butcher, brewer, or baker make their livings, but from an appeal to the customer’s desire for a good product at a fair price. To meet his own needs, the butcher must not plead about how poorly his family is doing but about how well he will cut the meat and trim the fat.

Amartya Sen (1993) interprets Smith as saying that self-interest is the motivation for exchange, particularly commodities exchange (1997). In these passages, though, Smith notes that self interest is also the motive for begging. The appeal to self interest, though, is better than begging for getting the necessities of life. Appealing to others' self interest assures a steadier and more-balanced supply of necessities in a world of complex production. The desire for steady, balanced supplies of necessities, not merely self-interest, is the mainspring of mutual exchange.

Furthermore, while Sen (1993) interprets Smith in a way that divides production and exchange, Smith in these passages has shown that production itself involves numerous exchanges. Making the day-labourer’s woolen coat requires exchanges among numerous producers and carriers of its individual parts and the derivative products used to make the coat or distribute it.

Complexity of exchange in the production process is what makes begging inefficient. Rosenberg (1990) and Becker (1989) both explain Smith’s emphasis on self-interest in terms of a scarcity of benevolence. While this idea may be consistent with WN , it seems to be read into, not out of, the text where the emphasis is on mismatches between benevolences offered and benevolences desired or required. Instead of a shortage of benevolences, Smith points to a shortage of time needed to cultivate the various benevolences that could assure a steady and complete supply of necessities but that are usually available only at great distances from the beggar. Begging leads to the inefficiencies of feast or famine and associated mismatches of wants and provisions.2

When Rosenberg says that "self-interest can be pursued in innumerable antisocial ways" (1960: 558), he is consistent with (while not directly mentioning) the view expressed here regarding begging versus mutual exchange.

In context, the relation among self-interest, begging, and the division of labor seems clear: the division of labor causes begging to be a poor method of pursuing one’s self-interest. Myers (1983) recognizes a relation between Smith's moral philosophy and the division of labor but makes the division of labor depend on self-interest: "Consequently, the division of labor arises from a desire to serve one's self-interest but in such a way as to engage the self-interest of others" (Myers 1983: 113). While Myers' conclusion regarding cause and effect is another inference suggested by Smith's first two chapters, the context more clearly supports a subtly different idea: the propensity to "truck, barter, and exchange" leads to a division of labor and complex patterns of production and trade, which must be supported by reciprocating appeals to the self-interest of others in order for exchange to be conducted for the social good.

While Rosenberg (1990), Becker, and Myers draw from the text of WN, Bk I, Ch 2 potentially valid and helpful inferences not implied by the context, other commentators draw inferences at odds with the context. Even though Adam Smith was addressing reasons why we should appeal to others’ self-interest, Lutz and Lux (1988) and Etzioni (1988) vigorously argue against what they see as the implied proposition that people always do or should act in their own self-interest. Lutz (1985) also derives policy implications from his appeal to a hierarchy of needs which run quite contrary to the context. According to Lutz, when lower needs for food and shelter are met, we can abandon an appeal to self-interest. But meeting the lower needs has occurred through our reliance on increasingly complex production and trade due to more extensive division of labor. As a result, self-interest is still a most efficient and even necessary motivator, its incentive effects being crucial to maintaining the high standard of living and to spreading it to those in developing nations.

As suggested earlier, it is not new to find a "benevolent" meaning in Smith’s ideas on self love. For instance, Rosenberg (1990:11) finds in Smith's Lectures a relation between self-interested behavior and additions to society's stock of moral capital: as commerce in a nation increases, self-interest leads those with commercial interests to increase in "probity" (strict honesty) and "punctuality."3 West (1969: 82-84) is also able to reconcile self love and benevolence by noting that Smith applied the one to commercial transactions and the other elsewhere in life (commercial transactions not being the only or even predominate sphere of human activity for Smith). West (1969*: 95) also notes that Smith (TMS) viewed self love in the context of Christ’s admonition to "love your neighbor as your self."

What is needed, though, is not always a new insight. Furthermore, for understanding Adam Smith on self love, his own texts interpret the text well enough.

The Adam-Smith Problem

What remains of the "Adam-Smith problem", the apparent contradiction between assumptions about benevolence and self-interest in TMS and WN? Examining the passage on self love shows that it in no way violates the spirit of TMS. Our sympathy is being awakened in this passage on self love. Which is better: to beg for food or to work for food? It is presumptuous to appeal to benevolence, and kind to appeal to another's self-interest (or needs). In context, no "Adam-Smith problem" exists in Book I, Chapter 2 of WN. Our reason and sympathies tell us that, in a world of complex production and distribution, society gains when we choose to motivate others to serve us by offering to serve them as well. Adam Smith was promoting common courtesy, not unbridled selfishness, and appealing to another’s self love is the basis for socializing people who live at great distances, even in different cultures. If promoting cooperation among disparate groups of people is the goal, Adam Smith has shown us a powerful mechanism in market exchange.

His comments on self love constitute not so much an extreme assumption of a narrow range of selfish human motives but rather reflect the reality of human nature and the complexity of commercial society. Advocates for ‘socialism’ hold out a visionary hope for living in a cooperative community and generally view Smith’s market economy critically (see especially West’s 1969, pp. 81, ff., identification of Karl Marx as one of Smith’s harshest critics). Various critical commentators on Smith’s WN have viewed his self-interest principle as socially dysfunctional. To socialize, however, means just this: to make the individual fit for interacting in the group (Miriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition, p. 1114). A closer reading of WN shows Smith to be explaining an important principle of socialization: appealing to others’ self-interests encourages economic cooperation.4

According to T. D. Campbell (1975: 70) Smith’s moral theory, summarized in the TMS title, "is that men approve of the conduct and character of another person if, when they imagine themselves to be in that person’s situation, their ‘sympathetic’ feelings accord with those which they observe to motivate the person’s behavior; and similarly, men disapprove of actions or attitudes which they cannot enter into by this sort of imaginative change of situation." Morrow (1928: 174-75) also emphasizes this idea: "When we see a stroke aimed at the leg or arm of another we instinctively draw back our own as if it were threatened. In watching a tight-rope walker we ourselves feel a sense of relief when he has reached the platform at the end. ... When we sympathize we approve... This is really all there is in the theory, though the detailed application ... to various forms of moral judgment is most interesting and ingenious."

What would Smith’s impartial observer think of begging (as opposed to charity toward a beggar)? Heilbroner (1982) finds Smith’s view in TMS somewhat disturbing: "The mere want of fortune, mere poverty excites little compassion. Its complaints are too apt to be the object of contempt rather than fellow-feeling. We despise a beggar; and though his importunities may extort alms from us, he is scarce ever the object of any serious commiseration" (TMS: 437; quoted in Heilbroner 1982: 437). While Smith may be harsh in his assessment of beggars, as Heilbroner (1982) contends,5 and while his theory of moral sentiments may be "too complicated to be a common occurrence" (D. D. Raphael 1975: 99), Smith is not guilty of a contradiction between his ideas of sympathy and moral sentiments in TMS and his idea that self love is a motivation for mutual exchange in WN.

West’s (1969: 85, 89-93) explanations of the impartial spectator’s shared sorrow for the distressed and ‘sympathy’ (or joyful "empathy") for the rich are somewhat at odds with Heilbroner’s negative reaction to Smith on begging. Even so, they point to a similar conclusion about the consistency of TMS and WN. "[T]he spectator [has] a propensity to enter into and share sorrow of" the individual (West 1969: 85). He shares the joy as well. "To what purpose, Smith asks, is all the toil and bustle of this world? ... [A]ll this feverish economic activity is prompted by mankind’s desire to seek sympathy. Since people sympathize more with our joy than with our sorrow we try to conceal our poverty and to parade our riches" (West 1969: 90). When we appeal to another’s self love in exchange, we are also pleasing the impartial spectator who sympathizes with the resulting mutual improvement of both parties. While the impartial spectator would approve of benevolence toward the beggar, he would share the beggar’s distress.

For Smith, then, appealing to another’s self love in mutual exchange is a morally superior outcome to pursuing self love by begging. Sympathy and self love are not necessarily contradictory. As Morrow has more cautiously asserted (1928: 178), "It might almost be said that the doctrine of sympathy [in TMS] is a necessary presupposition of the doctrine of the natural order expounded in the Wealth of Nations. At least it seems quite probable that Adam Smith had this earlier theory in mind as a covering for the naked individualism which he expounds in the later work... It is because the individual is in his very nature socialized, a product of the social environment, that he can in general be left without external interference to act in accordance with the demands of his individual nature."

Conclusions

The full context of Smith's WN explanation of the role of self love may be one of the most misunderstood portions of the book. When not misunderstood, the context is simply ignored. The context is crucial to a correct interpretation of Smith's concept of human behavior; to understand Smith's economic man, the first two chapters must be read as a whole and with understanding of ‘sympathy’ from TMS to get the full meaning of the appeal to self love.

That no necessary contradiction or dichotomy exists in Smith's two treatments of human behavior in TMS and WN is made clear in the context of his reference to self love in WN. First of all, division of labor, complex production, and consumer needs and wants are the starting points for the analysis, not selfishness. Men are capable of both benevolence and self love and Smith shows clearly that appeal to benevolence is capable of providing a few of our needs at particular times, but not all of our needs and wants all of the time. Smith's discussion of self love did not have purely selfish behavior in mind. It is selfish to depend on charity and even more selfish to depend on theft. The sympathetic observer or impartial spectator recognizes the beneficial role of appeals to the self interest of others in socializing people at a distance.

Consider a beggar who depends on benevolences from local shop keepers. If he were to request a coat from the local tailor who makes the ‘day-labourer’s woolen coat’, under which circumstances would the beggar be better off? Would he be better suited if the innumerable people involved in production of the coat were to beg from one another, depending on each other’s benevolence? Or is he more likely to be better accommodated in a world where those who trade and work appeal to one another’s self interests?

The context of the first two chapters of WN and related texts in TMS force economists, sociologists, and moral philosophers to radically rethink any stern criticisms of Adam Smith as the one who turned political economy into "the science of egoism", as the German historical economist Hildebrand contended (Gide and Rist 1948). Appealing to others’ self love is much less egoistic than begging or stealing, and generally more beneficial to society.

NOTES

1 Nathan Rosenberg is one of the more recent scholars to draw attention to the contrast:

2 To reduce such inefficiencies for those who have no alternative or who choose to beg, modern society establishes private charitable agencies--food banks, soup kitchens, used clothing shops, and so on--and public welfare agencies.

3 This is similar to John Commons’ (1926) notion that the goodwill value of a firm and the customer relations which give rise to it are based on the ethical behavior of firms: in order to promote regular patronage and increase its value, a firm must endeavor to provide ethical service (see Black 1994).

4 Beginning as they do with the ideas of Emil Durkeim and Karl Marx, sociologists have generally been reluctant to view Smith as contributing important ideas to their discipline. David Reisman, however, in Adam Smith’s Sociological Economics (1976) recognizes Smith’s concern for sociological issues outside the narrow focus of commercial and ‘economic’ relations. Reisman even finds correlations between Smith’s and Durkeim’s theories of morality (p. 69) and their integration of the economic with the law, morality, religion, and the state (p. 11).

5 Heilbroner remarks that Smith’s analysis "is not brought to bear on other analogous misfortunes" (1982: 437). Smith’s response to those with such views in his own day is stunning in its realistic indifference to those whose "misery ... in no respect depends upon our conduct" (TMS: 139). He refers to them as "those whining and melancholy moralists, who are perpetually reproaching us with our happiness, while so many of our brethren are in misery, who regard as impious the natural joy of prosperity, which does not think of the many wretches that are at every instant labouring under all sorts of calamities, in the languor of poverty, in the agony of disease, in the horrors of death, under the insults and oppression of their enemies." (TMS: 139) Note that Smith is writing there about only one aspect of sympathy: propriety. He also is writing against envy and empty sentiments, upon which the individual cannot act, but not against benevolence. His discussions of benevolence are found elsewhere in TMS. Nevertheless, Heilbroner is right: Smith’s tone is harsh, especially for those who have accepted even minimally the ethos of a modern social-welfare state. Mark Perelman’s (1989: 514-15) review of what Smith considered virtuous--the virtues of the "petty bourgeoisie", people who were "prudent, hard-working individuals"--may give insight into Smith’s acceptance of a middle-class indifference to poverty that is common even today.

REFERENCES