Did Adam Smith's Ideas on Markets 'Shake the World'?
Grant McCracken posts at ‘This Blog Sits At The intersection of anthropology and economics’ (here).
It is a Blog that I bookmarked sometime ago but with my recent writing schedule I had little time to drop in on much out of my field. This morning I took time to look in and found Grant’s piece on “Adam Smith and the American corporation”, complete with large portrait image of Adam Smith (no doubt it will be picked up on Google too; it's just arrived on email).
“That brilliant Scottish idea, the one that accomplished something like an intellectual miracle, and stripped away all things the rest of the world, and the whole of the world, took for granted.
It said all of the sociality that is present to the creation of any social moment, the existence of prior understandings and connections and an assignment of status according to who owns what to whom as established by kinship, clan or hierarchy, or some other social overlay--all of this we can set aside.
For this thing called a market, we need only posit two parties, as unattached atoms, engaged only by their interest, and only for the duration of this exchange of value. That's all. They will have social connections, they will be something to someone for some purposes, and they will be this over time and space, but in this thing called a market, they are atoms with interest transacting. C'est, as the French say, tout. (Sorry. I was in Montreal all day.)
It was a simplifying idea, and a liberational one. It released the world from cultural constructs and social elites, and it made the world responsive to what people wanted in spite of social assigned standing, status and desire. It enabled a world that was responsive, not to what people were supposed to want, but what, for better or worse, and often worse, they did want. (I will tell you in confidence that I am the only anthropologist on the face of the earth prepared to make this argument. Where I see liberation and transparency, they see alienation and anomie. To which I say, freedom is grueling difficult and only people with tenure think otherwise.)
And as bad as this ever was (this uncontrolled wanting), there was now at least a certain transparency. This world was not a reflection of the interest of elites or the imaginings of culture. It reflected, in an unsentimental, unmediated way, what people were actually willing to pay for. In a marketplace society, the truth will out. Elites and received wisdom, these get the Sicilian salute. (A mental picture of which, please insert here.)
It was a simplifying idea, and a liberational one. It released the world from cultural constructs and social elites, and it made the world responsive to what people wanted in spite of social assigned standing, status and desire. It enabled a world that was responsive, not to what people were supposed to want, but what, for better or worse, and often worse, they did want. (I will tell you in confidence that I am the only anthropologist on the face of the earth prepared to make this argument. Where I see liberation and transparency, they see alienation and anomie. To which I say, freedom is grueling difficult and only people with tenure think otherwise.)
And as bad as this ever was (this uncontrolled wanting), there was now at least a certain transparency. This world was not a reflection of the interest of elites or the imaginings of culture. It reflected, in an unsentimental, unmediated way, what people were actually willing to pay for. In a marketplace society, the truth will out. Elites and received wisdom, these get the Sicilian salute. (A mental picture of which, please insert here.)”
Comment
I see what Grant McCracken is getting at. Markets are an important phenomenon and have been for a long time in human history (and, in my view in prehistory too). And I am happy that he credits Adam Smith with some originality in this area, when his ideas in Moral Sentiments are combined with his analysis of markets in the first two books of Wealth Of Nations.
However, I am a trifle worried about the practice of exaggerating the impact of ideas when published in some form. Original ideas, and events, are often described as the idea, or event, that ‘shook the world’. This is gross hyperbole.
People traded long before anybody theorized about it. You can get an idea of how long before markets were theorized from the early chapters of Findlay and O’Rourke’s Power and Plenty: trade, war, and the world economy in the second millennium (Princeton University Press; just published).
Even long after the idea emerges to explain something like markets, there is the inevitable lack of consensus as to what the phenomenon means; the idea, for them, is tarnished. Some, including myself, see markets are liberating; others see them as anonymous tyrannies (and worse). There is no agreement as to the significance of the idea, plus the far larger number of people who never hear of the idea at all.
A couple of thousand people read Adam Smith (out of the many more who bought his books while he was alive); in effect it was as if he had never written about markets at all.
‘It released the world from cultural constructs and social elites, and it made the world responsive to what people wanted in spite of social assigned standing, status and desire.’
Well, yes, but not in a literal sense, I would suggest.
It is a Blog that I bookmarked sometime ago but with my recent writing schedule I had little time to drop in on much out of my field. This morning I took time to look in and found Grant’s piece on “Adam Smith and the American corporation”, complete with large portrait image of Adam Smith (no doubt it will be picked up on Google too; it's just arrived on email).
“That brilliant Scottish idea, the one that accomplished something like an intellectual miracle, and stripped away all things the rest of the world, and the whole of the world, took for granted.
It said all of the sociality that is present to the creation of any social moment, the existence of prior understandings and connections and an assignment of status according to who owns what to whom as established by kinship, clan or hierarchy, or some other social overlay--all of this we can set aside.
For this thing called a market, we need only posit two parties, as unattached atoms, engaged only by their interest, and only for the duration of this exchange of value. That's all. They will have social connections, they will be something to someone for some purposes, and they will be this over time and space, but in this thing called a market, they are atoms with interest transacting. C'est, as the French say, tout. (Sorry. I was in Montreal all day.)
It was a simplifying idea, and a liberational one. It released the world from cultural constructs and social elites, and it made the world responsive to what people wanted in spite of social assigned standing, status and desire. It enabled a world that was responsive, not to what people were supposed to want, but what, for better or worse, and often worse, they did want. (I will tell you in confidence that I am the only anthropologist on the face of the earth prepared to make this argument. Where I see liberation and transparency, they see alienation and anomie. To which I say, freedom is grueling difficult and only people with tenure think otherwise.)
And as bad as this ever was (this uncontrolled wanting), there was now at least a certain transparency. This world was not a reflection of the interest of elites or the imaginings of culture. It reflected, in an unsentimental, unmediated way, what people were actually willing to pay for. In a marketplace society, the truth will out. Elites and received wisdom, these get the Sicilian salute. (A mental picture of which, please insert here.)
It was a simplifying idea, and a liberational one. It released the world from cultural constructs and social elites, and it made the world responsive to what people wanted in spite of social assigned standing, status and desire. It enabled a world that was responsive, not to what people were supposed to want, but what, for better or worse, and often worse, they did want. (I will tell you in confidence that I am the only anthropologist on the face of the earth prepared to make this argument. Where I see liberation and transparency, they see alienation and anomie. To which I say, freedom is grueling difficult and only people with tenure think otherwise.)
And as bad as this ever was (this uncontrolled wanting), there was now at least a certain transparency. This world was not a reflection of the interest of elites or the imaginings of culture. It reflected, in an unsentimental, unmediated way, what people were actually willing to pay for. In a marketplace society, the truth will out. Elites and received wisdom, these get the Sicilian salute. (A mental picture of which, please insert here.)”
Comment
I see what Grant McCracken is getting at. Markets are an important phenomenon and have been for a long time in human history (and, in my view in prehistory too). And I am happy that he credits Adam Smith with some originality in this area, when his ideas in Moral Sentiments are combined with his analysis of markets in the first two books of Wealth Of Nations.
However, I am a trifle worried about the practice of exaggerating the impact of ideas when published in some form. Original ideas, and events, are often described as the idea, or event, that ‘shook the world’. This is gross hyperbole.
People traded long before anybody theorized about it. You can get an idea of how long before markets were theorized from the early chapters of Findlay and O’Rourke’s Power and Plenty: trade, war, and the world economy in the second millennium (Princeton University Press; just published).
Even long after the idea emerges to explain something like markets, there is the inevitable lack of consensus as to what the phenomenon means; the idea, for them, is tarnished. Some, including myself, see markets are liberating; others see them as anonymous tyrannies (and worse). There is no agreement as to the significance of the idea, plus the far larger number of people who never hear of the idea at all.
A couple of thousand people read Adam Smith (out of the many more who bought his books while he was alive); in effect it was as if he had never written about markets at all.
‘It released the world from cultural constructs and social elites, and it made the world responsive to what people wanted in spite of social assigned standing, status and desire.’
Well, yes, but not in a literal sense, I would suggest.
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