{"agent_id":"adam-smith","agent_name":"Adam Smith","slug":"the-role-of-the-state","label":"The role of the state: is Smith the prophet of laissez-faire and minimal government, or does the 'system of natural liberty' rest on justice, public works, and the duties of the sovereign?","topic":"The role of the state","question":"Is Smith the prophet of laissez-faire and minimal government, or does the 'system of natural liberty' rest on justice, public works, and the duties of the sovereign?","position":"The system of natural liberty is not the absence of government; it is the removal of the mercantile system of preferences and restraints, after which every man is left free to pursue his own interest his own way — so long as he does not violate the laws of justice. Strike out that condition and you have not my doctrine but its counterfeit. Justice is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice; benevolence is the ornament, but justice is the foundation, and its enforcement is the first duty of the state. I assigned the sovereign three great duties, and they are not small: the defense of the society; the exact administration of justice; and the erection and maintenance of those public works and public institutions which, though advantageous to a great society, could never repay the expense to any individual — among them the education of the common people, which I argued the state must provide precisely because the market will not. I held that the rich should contribute to the public expense not only in proportion to their revenue but something more than in that proportion. And my sharpest scorn was reserved not for government as such but for the man of system, so enamoured of his own ideal plan that he would arrange a great society as a hand arranges pieces upon a chess-board, forgetting that every piece has a principle of motion of its own. Distrust of the schemer is not the same as worship of the market; I distrusted the projector, the monopolist, and the legislator captured by merchants in equal measure.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The system of natural liberty is not the absence of government; it is the removal of the mercantile system of preferences and restraints, after which every man is left free to pursue his own interest his own way — so long as he does not violate the laws of justice.","n":[1]},{"t":"Strike out that condition and you have not my doctrine but its counterfeit.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Justice is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice; benevolence is the ornament, but justice is the foundation, and its enforcement is the first duty of the state.","n":[]},{"t":"I assigned the sovereign three great duties, and they are not small: the defense of the society; the exact administration of justice; and the erection and maintenance of those public works and public institutions which, though advantageous to a great society, could never repay the expense to any individual — among them the education of the common people, which I argued the state must provide precisely because the market will not.","n":[]}],[{"t":"I held that the rich should contribute to the public expense not only in proportion to their revenue but something more than in that proportion.","n":[]},{"t":"And my sharpest scorn was reserved not for government as such but for the man of system, so enamoured of his own ideal plan that he would arrange a great society as a hand arranges pieces upon a chess-board, forgetting that every piece has a principle of motion of its own.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Distrust of the schemer is not the same as worship of the market; I distrusted the projector, the monopolist, and the legislator captured by merchants in equal measure.","n":[2]}]],"texts":"The Wealth of Nations Book IV Chapter IX (the system of natural liberty and its limits) and Book V (the duties of the sovereign: defense, justice, public works and public institutions, including education; the discussion of taxation, where the rich ought to contribute more than in proportion to their revenue); the critique of the mercantile system throughout Book IV; The Theory of Moral Sentiments VI.ii.2 (the 'man of system' who would arrange society like pieces on a chess-board). Reception: the Chicago School and libertarian appropriation of the 'system of natural liberty'; Jacob Viner's classic 'Adam Smith and Laissez Faire' (1927) showing the extent of Smith's admitted state functions; Emma Rothschild, Samuel Fleischacker (On Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, 2004), and the recovery of Smith's substantial and non-minimal state.","works":["The Wealth of Nations Book IV Chapter IX (the system of natural liberty and its limits) and Book V (the duties of the sovereign: defense, justice, public works and public institutions, including education","the discussion of taxation, where the rich ought to contribute more than in proportion to their revenue)","the critique of the mercantile system throughout Book IV","The Theory of Moral Sentiments VI.ii.2 (the 'man of system' who would arrange society like pieces on a chess-board)"],"reception":"the Chicago School and libertarian appropriation of the 'system of natural liberty'; Jacob Viner's classic 'Adam Smith and Laissez Faire' (1927) showing the extent of Smith's admitted state functions; Emma Rothschild, Samuel Fleischacker (On Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, 2004), and the recovery of Smith's substantial and non-minimal state.","status":"The political meaning of Smith has been contested for two centuries. Jacob Viner's \"Adam Smith and Laissez Faire\" (1927) established, against the libertarian legend, that Smith admitted a wide and growing list of legitimate state functions. The Chicago School and the twentieth-century libertarian movement nonetheless enlisted the \"system of natural liberty\" as the charter of minimal government. The revisionist scholarship (Emma Rothschild's Economic Sentiments, 2001; Samuel Fleischacker's On Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, 2004; Amartya Sen) has recovered a Smith who grounded the market in justice, demanded public education and public works, worried about the capture of the state by commercial interests, and leaned egalitarian on taxation. The contest is not primarily textual — the Book V duties are plain — but political: whose Smith gets to stand on the pedestal.","era":"1723-1790","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Wealth of Nations","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"It retards, instead of accelerating the progress of the society towards real wealth and greatness; and diminishes, instead of increasing, the real value of the annual produce of its land and labour. 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.","label":"The Wealth of Nations"},{"n":2,"work":"The Wealth of Nations","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"The judge should not be liable to be removed from his office according to the caprice of that power. The regular payment of his salary should not depend upon the good will, or even upon the good economy of that power.","label":"The Wealth of Nations"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-invisible-hand","label":"The invisible hand: does the pursuit of self-interest, coordinated by the market, promote the public good?"},{"slug":"the-impartial-spectator","label":"The impartial spectator: is moral judgment grounded in sympathy and the view of an imagined impartial observer, rather than in reason or a moral sense?"},{"slug":"das-adam-smith-problem","label":"Das Adam Smith Problem: is there a contradiction between the sympathy-governed human being of the Moral Sentiments and the self-interested agent of the Wealth of Nations?"},{"slug":"the-division-of-labour","label":"The division of labour: is it an unmixed good, given that Smith himself says it renders the labourer 'as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become'?"}]}