Adam Smith on Natural Liberty
Sauvik Chakraverti writes, 19 November, in Antidote, (‘libertarian opinion from Indyeah)’: "Adam Smith... And Marathi Politics’ HERE
“The news that the government of Maharashtra has dictated 80 per cent reservations in jobs for locals must be viewed as an Injustice, given that Justice demands a Rule of Law in which there is neither Preference nor Restraint.
This is preferential treatment for locals – and it brings to mind what Adam Smith wrote on the subject. This quote is from The Wealth of Nations:
“All systems either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men. The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and of directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interest of the society. According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings: first, the duty of protecting the society from violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.”
Comment
Sauvik Chakraverti's quotation is to be found at WN IV.ix.51: pp 687-8. From what is reported to be happening in Maharashtra the quotation appears to be apt, though I do not know enough about the circumstances to comment authoritatively.
However, Sauvik Chakraverti gives me an opportunity to make a comment on Natural Liberty and Adam Smith.
Adam Smith was educated at Glasgow University in the principles of Natural Liberty, a school of thinking notably espoused by the distinguished lineage of Grotius, Pufendorf, Carmichael, and Hutcheson, and it was taught in the Scottish universities in the 18th century.
Many readers of Wealth Of Nations, however, mistakenly confuse the precepts of Natural Liberty – philosophically an element of moral philosophy – with those associated with laissez-faire economics.
Smith was careful to distinguish the jurisprudential roots of Natural Liberty which was applicable in all societies, independently of their subsistence basis of their economies, from the political economy of commercial societies.
Cointrary to myth, he did not advocate laissez-faire economics though he was familiar with the Physiocratic terminology of some of its members (he met and discoursed with them in Paris and elsewhere, and in correspondence and the exchange of manuscripts but he never used the words laissez-faire in anything he wrote).
Tellingly, he made many references to either curbs on the behaviours of ‘merchants and manufacturers’ and to interventions that he considered necessary by governments to curb the freedoms of some of the same people, of whom he was suspicious of their tendency to act against the interests of consumers. There are over 50 instances of him mentioning the less than beneficial actions of sel-interested individuals in Books I, II and III of Wealth Of Nations.
On such set of commercial entrepreneurs that he wrote extensively about were the bankers of Scotland and the rest of the UK at the time. After a long discourse in Book II, chapter 2, on banking operations and some of managers and customers' dangerous failings on occasion, he drew a line between Natural Liberty and total commercial freedom:
“To restrain private people, it may be said, from receiving in payment the promissory notes of a banker, for any sum whether great or small, when they themselves are willing to receive them, or to restrain a banker from issuing such notes, when all his neighbours are willing to accept of them, is a manifest violation of that natural liberty which it is the proper business of law not to infringe, but to support. Such regulations may, no doubt, be considered as in some respects a violation of natural liberty. But those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments, of the most free as well as of the most despotical. The obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent the communication of fire, is a violation of natural liberty exactly of the same kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed.” [WN II.ii.95: p 324]
I think this is clear enough.
It separates ‘freedom’ as a legal concept and as a practical policy by a qualifying restraint where a person’s freedom has deleterious consequences on the public good.
Clearly, not all individual putsuits of self interest necessarily and unintentionally benefit society; hence mythical theories of the invisible hand imposed on Adam Smith by 20th-21st century economists are a manifest violation of Adam Smith’s intellectual integrity and a gross abuse of his legacy. In short, a violation of his Natural Liberty rights.
My thanks to Sauvik Chakraverti for creating this opportunity to comment on this important distinction.
“The news that the government of Maharashtra has dictated 80 per cent reservations in jobs for locals must be viewed as an Injustice, given that Justice demands a Rule of Law in which there is neither Preference nor Restraint.
This is preferential treatment for locals – and it brings to mind what Adam Smith wrote on the subject. This quote is from The Wealth of Nations:
“All systems either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men. The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and of directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interest of the society. According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings: first, the duty of protecting the society from violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.”
Comment
Sauvik Chakraverti's quotation is to be found at WN IV.ix.51: pp 687-8. From what is reported to be happening in Maharashtra the quotation appears to be apt, though I do not know enough about the circumstances to comment authoritatively.
However, Sauvik Chakraverti gives me an opportunity to make a comment on Natural Liberty and Adam Smith.
Adam Smith was educated at Glasgow University in the principles of Natural Liberty, a school of thinking notably espoused by the distinguished lineage of Grotius, Pufendorf, Carmichael, and Hutcheson, and it was taught in the Scottish universities in the 18th century.
Many readers of Wealth Of Nations, however, mistakenly confuse the precepts of Natural Liberty – philosophically an element of moral philosophy – with those associated with laissez-faire economics.
Smith was careful to distinguish the jurisprudential roots of Natural Liberty which was applicable in all societies, independently of their subsistence basis of their economies, from the political economy of commercial societies.
Cointrary to myth, he did not advocate laissez-faire economics though he was familiar with the Physiocratic terminology of some of its members (he met and discoursed with them in Paris and elsewhere, and in correspondence and the exchange of manuscripts but he never used the words laissez-faire in anything he wrote).
Tellingly, he made many references to either curbs on the behaviours of ‘merchants and manufacturers’ and to interventions that he considered necessary by governments to curb the freedoms of some of the same people, of whom he was suspicious of their tendency to act against the interests of consumers. There are over 50 instances of him mentioning the less than beneficial actions of sel-interested individuals in Books I, II and III of Wealth Of Nations.
On such set of commercial entrepreneurs that he wrote extensively about were the bankers of Scotland and the rest of the UK at the time. After a long discourse in Book II, chapter 2, on banking operations and some of managers and customers' dangerous failings on occasion, he drew a line between Natural Liberty and total commercial freedom:
“To restrain private people, it may be said, from receiving in payment the promissory notes of a banker, for any sum whether great or small, when they themselves are willing to receive them, or to restrain a banker from issuing such notes, when all his neighbours are willing to accept of them, is a manifest violation of that natural liberty which it is the proper business of law not to infringe, but to support. Such regulations may, no doubt, be considered as in some respects a violation of natural liberty. But those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments, of the most free as well as of the most despotical. The obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent the communication of fire, is a violation of natural liberty exactly of the same kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed.” [WN II.ii.95: p 324]
I think this is clear enough.
It separates ‘freedom’ as a legal concept and as a practical policy by a qualifying restraint where a person’s freedom has deleterious consequences on the public good.
Clearly, not all individual putsuits of self interest necessarily and unintentionally benefit society; hence mythical theories of the invisible hand imposed on Adam Smith by 20th-21st century economists are a manifest violation of Adam Smith’s intellectual integrity and a gross abuse of his legacy. In short, a violation of his Natural Liberty rights.
My thanks to Sauvik Chakraverti for creating this opportunity to comment on this important distinction.
Labels: Banking, Invisible Hand, Natural Liberty
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