Read Online On the Wealth of Nations by P.J. O'Rourke - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: P.J. O'Rourke
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people do not feel themselves secure in the possession of their property, in which the faith of contracts is not supported by law, and in which the authority of the state is not supposed to be regularly employed in enforcing the payment of debts. 6
Justice is necessary for protecting property. But property is necessarily unjust â 'Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.' 7 Smith wrote that we can dispense with law. 'Where there is no property, ⦠civil government is not so necessary.' 8 But then we will get the opposite of law (and property) in the lawless proprietorship of feudalism or Mao. So political systems must be established to preserve the injustice of property by administering justice.
Adam Smith was not an absurdist. Political critiques are better left to a Jonathan Swift or a Bernard Mandeville. In the early 1700s, Mandeville wrote
The Fable of the Bees,
a poem and commentary in which, Mandeville stated, 'I flatter my self to have demonstrated that ⦠what we call Evil in the World, Moral as well as Natural, is the grand Principle that makes us sociable Creatures.' 9
The worst of all the Multitude
Did something for the Common Good.
â¦
⦠whilst Luxury
Employ'd a Million of the Poor,
And odious Pride a Million more:
Envy it self, and Vanity,
Were Ministers of Industry;
Their darling Folly, Fickleness,
In Diet, Furniture and Dress,
That strange ridic'lous Vice, was made
The very Wheel that turn'd the Trade.
â¦
Thus Vice nurs'd Ingenuity,
Which join'd with Time and Industry,
Had carry'd Life's Conveniences,
It's real Pleasures, Comforts, Ease,
To such Height, the very Poor
Liv'd better than the Rich before,
And nothing could be added more.
10
One of Mandeville's other works was
A Modest Defence of Public Stews; or, An Essay upon Whoring.
He was even more poker-faced than Swift in his efforts
pour épater les bourgeois.
This caused Smith to have a sense of humor failure in
Moral Sentiments:
'There is, however, another system which seems to take away altogether the distinction between vice and virtue, and of which the tendency is, upon that account, wholly pernicious: I mean the system of Dr. Mandeville.' 11
A 'system which seems to take away altogether the distinction between vice and virtue' â what is that but Poli Sci in thirteen words?
One answer to the political quandary is a populist extension of Smith's obvious and simple liberties. Modern political cynics can at least cite Winston Churchill's dictum from his speech to the House of Commons in November 1947: 'Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried.' But in Smith's time democracy hadn't been tried. Adam Smith had no such touching faith to fall back upon.
There is nothing theoretically wonderful about rule of the people, by the people. For example, in one of Smith's lectures on moral philosophy, he theorized that slavery could never be abolished in a republic because, 'The persons who make all the laws in that country are persons who have slaves themselves.' 12
Most of the eighteenth century's information about democracy was more than two thousand years old. Like anyeducated man, Smith knew the history of the Peloponnesian Wars. It's a long story that can be briefly told. Democratic Athens screwed up. Smith didn't consider the more recent experiments in democracy to be encouraging. He looked at Calvinist Protestants in Switzerland and concluded that their 'right of electing their own pastor ⦠seems to have been productive of nothing but disorder and confusion, and to have tended equally to corrupt the morals both of the clergy and of the people'. 13 (John Calvin had the anti-Trinitarian Michael Servetus burned at the stake in 1553.) Nor was Smith impressed by what he'd seen so far of democracy in the American colonies. He noted the 'rancorous and virulent factions which are inseparable from small democracies', 14 and predicted
Justice is necessary for protecting property. But property is necessarily unjust â 'Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.' 7 Smith wrote that we can dispense with law. 'Where there is no property, ⦠civil government is not so necessary.' 8 But then we will get the opposite of law (and property) in the lawless proprietorship of feudalism or Mao. So political systems must be established to preserve the injustice of property by administering justice.
Adam Smith was not an absurdist. Political critiques are better left to a Jonathan Swift or a Bernard Mandeville. In the early 1700s, Mandeville wrote
The Fable of the Bees,
a poem and commentary in which, Mandeville stated, 'I flatter my self to have demonstrated that ⦠what we call Evil in the World, Moral as well as Natural, is the grand Principle that makes us sociable Creatures.' 9
The worst of all the Multitude
Did something for the Common Good.
â¦
⦠whilst Luxury
Employ'd a Million of the Poor,
And odious Pride a Million more:
Envy it self, and Vanity,
Were Ministers of Industry;
Their darling Folly, Fickleness,
In Diet, Furniture and Dress,
That strange ridic'lous Vice, was made
The very Wheel that turn'd the Trade.
â¦
Thus Vice nurs'd Ingenuity,
Which join'd with Time and Industry,
Had carry'd Life's Conveniences,
It's real Pleasures, Comforts, Ease,
To such Height, the very Poor
Liv'd better than the Rich before,
And nothing could be added more.
10
One of Mandeville's other works was
A Modest Defence of Public Stews; or, An Essay upon Whoring.
He was even more poker-faced than Swift in his efforts
pour épater les bourgeois.
This caused Smith to have a sense of humor failure in
Moral Sentiments:
'There is, however, another system which seems to take away altogether the distinction between vice and virtue, and of which the tendency is, upon that account, wholly pernicious: I mean the system of Dr. Mandeville.' 11
A 'system which seems to take away altogether the distinction between vice and virtue' â what is that but Poli Sci in thirteen words?
One answer to the political quandary is a populist extension of Smith's obvious and simple liberties. Modern political cynics can at least cite Winston Churchill's dictum from his speech to the House of Commons in November 1947: 'Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried.' But in Smith's time democracy hadn't been tried. Adam Smith had no such touching faith to fall back upon.
There is nothing theoretically wonderful about rule of the people, by the people. For example, in one of Smith's lectures on moral philosophy, he theorized that slavery could never be abolished in a republic because, 'The persons who make all the laws in that country are persons who have slaves themselves.' 12
Most of the eighteenth century's information about democracy was more than two thousand years old. Like anyeducated man, Smith knew the history of the Peloponnesian Wars. It's a long story that can be briefly told. Democratic Athens screwed up. Smith didn't consider the more recent experiments in democracy to be encouraging. He looked at Calvinist Protestants in Switzerland and concluded that their 'right of electing their own pastor ⦠seems to have been productive of nothing but disorder and confusion, and to have tended equally to corrupt the morals both of the clergy and of the people'. 13 (John Calvin had the anti-Trinitarian Michael Servetus burned at the stake in 1553.) Nor was Smith impressed by what he'd seen so far of democracy in the American colonies. He noted the 'rancorous and virulent factions which are inseparable from small democracies', 14 and predicted
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