Read Online On the Wealth of Nations by P.J. O'Rourke - Free Book Online
Authors: P.J. O'Rourke
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something that Smith addressed with his own theory in part 6 of
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
. This section of the book was actually written after
The Wealth of Nations
.
Moral Sentiments
had been published in 1759 when Smith was teaching at Glasgow. But Smith revised it in 1789. By then he had met the physiocrats and had been exposed to their system of political economy. In part 6, titled 'Of the Character of Virtue', Smith located the evil of political systems in â per the great theme of
Moral Sentiments
â lack of imagination. Creating a theoretical political system does takeimagination, but, Smith argued, there's an unimaginative side to putting it into practice:
From a certain spirit of system ⦠we sometimes seem to value the means more than the end, and to be eager to promote the happiness of our fellow-creatures, rather from a view to perfect and improve a certain beautiful and orderly system, than from any immediate sense or feeling of what they either suffer or enjoy. 8
Theorizers, Smith wrote, can become 'intoxicated with the imaginary beauty of this ideal system' 9 until 'that public spirit which is founded upon the love of humanity' 10 is corrupted by a spirit of system that 'inflames it even to the madness of fanaticism'. 11
The physiocrats were moderate, inoffensive, and well meaning. But in the artificiality of their oversystematic system and in their idea that artificial systems change men, were the seeds of a hundred million murders. And their foolish doctrines about agricultural land would drive the colonial atrocities of the Victorian era and abet the kaiser's First World War, the führer's Second, Stalin's ruination of the Ukraine, and Mao's starvation of China. In the two centuries after the physiocrats, more people would die from excesses of theory than had died from excesses of theology in all the centuries before. (And, in another small matter of seed, the son of the mild physiocrat marquis was the French Revolution's fiery Mirabeau.)
Before totalitarianism had ever been tried, Adam Smith was prescient in his scorn for it:
The man of system ⦠is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamored with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it ⦠He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. 12
Barbed wire always seems to be needed to keep the chessmen on their squares.
Part 6 of
Moral Sentiments
is often read as referring to the constitution makers of the National Assembly in the early days of the French Revolution, rather than to the physiocrats. The Tennis Court Oath took place on June 20, 1789. Smith's revisions of
Moral Sentiments
were supposed to be sent to his publisher the same month. Assuming that Smith was late with his manuscript, as authors sometimes are, there was just time for both readings of part 6 to be true.
But if Smith was criticizing the French Revolution, he never knew how right he was. Smith died in July 1790, with the beheadings of France's king and queen and the Reign of Terror still in the future. The full ugliness of secular ideology wasn't evident to Adam Smith. Quarrels over 'place' â on earth or in heaven â were still the main worry of sensible eighteenth-century political observers.
Smith could take a detached view of theoretical political systems and, with no foreknowledge of the League of Nations or the Nazis, declare, 'Even the weakest and the worst of them are not altogether without their utility.' 13
Smith was firm in his contradiction of the physiocratic school but gentle with the physiocrats. In
The Wealth of Nations
he called their theory 'this liberal and generous system'. 14 And declared it to be, 'perhaps, the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been published upon the subject of political economy'.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
. This section of the book was actually written after
The Wealth of Nations
.
Moral Sentiments
had been published in 1759 when Smith was teaching at Glasgow. But Smith revised it in 1789. By then he had met the physiocrats and had been exposed to their system of political economy. In part 6, titled 'Of the Character of Virtue', Smith located the evil of political systems in â per the great theme of
Moral Sentiments
â lack of imagination. Creating a theoretical political system does takeimagination, but, Smith argued, there's an unimaginative side to putting it into practice:
From a certain spirit of system ⦠we sometimes seem to value the means more than the end, and to be eager to promote the happiness of our fellow-creatures, rather from a view to perfect and improve a certain beautiful and orderly system, than from any immediate sense or feeling of what they either suffer or enjoy. 8
Theorizers, Smith wrote, can become 'intoxicated with the imaginary beauty of this ideal system' 9 until 'that public spirit which is founded upon the love of humanity' 10 is corrupted by a spirit of system that 'inflames it even to the madness of fanaticism'. 11
The physiocrats were moderate, inoffensive, and well meaning. But in the artificiality of their oversystematic system and in their idea that artificial systems change men, were the seeds of a hundred million murders. And their foolish doctrines about agricultural land would drive the colonial atrocities of the Victorian era and abet the kaiser's First World War, the führer's Second, Stalin's ruination of the Ukraine, and Mao's starvation of China. In the two centuries after the physiocrats, more people would die from excesses of theory than had died from excesses of theology in all the centuries before. (And, in another small matter of seed, the son of the mild physiocrat marquis was the French Revolution's fiery Mirabeau.)
Before totalitarianism had ever been tried, Adam Smith was prescient in his scorn for it:
The man of system ⦠is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamored with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it ⦠He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. 12
Barbed wire always seems to be needed to keep the chessmen on their squares.
Part 6 of
Moral Sentiments
is often read as referring to the constitution makers of the National Assembly in the early days of the French Revolution, rather than to the physiocrats. The Tennis Court Oath took place on June 20, 1789. Smith's revisions of
Moral Sentiments
were supposed to be sent to his publisher the same month. Assuming that Smith was late with his manuscript, as authors sometimes are, there was just time for both readings of part 6 to be true.
But if Smith was criticizing the French Revolution, he never knew how right he was. Smith died in July 1790, with the beheadings of France's king and queen and the Reign of Terror still in the future. The full ugliness of secular ideology wasn't evident to Adam Smith. Quarrels over 'place' â on earth or in heaven â were still the main worry of sensible eighteenth-century political observers.
Smith could take a detached view of theoretical political systems and, with no foreknowledge of the League of Nations or the Nazis, declare, 'Even the weakest and the worst of them are not altogether without their utility.' 13
Smith was firm in his contradiction of the physiocratic school but gentle with the physiocrats. In
The Wealth of Nations
he called their theory 'this liberal and generous system'. 14 And declared it to be, 'perhaps, the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been published upon the subject of political economy'.
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