James Buchan’s new book provides further evidence to support Murray Rothbard’s thesis that Adam Smith was a somewhat brilliant man without direction and significant insight. And yet, Smith’s views were embraced by many, including both Margaret Thatcher and Karl Marx.
He was the supposed “champion of laissez-faire” economics without ever using the phrase. The supposed “free-thinker” who argued that people should “respect the established powers and privileges.”
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, in his Telegraph review, states that Smith was “an ‘infirm and sickly’ child, as an adult he was a champion hypochondriac who collected medical tracts, and could be heard murmuring to himself, ‘a day in bed – a day in bed.’
Renowned in Scottish Enlightenment circles for being ‘alert, practical, cautious, urbane and businesslike,’ he also had a dreamy, distracted air, ‘moving his lips and talking to himself, and smiling.’”
Buchan reports that Dr. Johnson once told James Boswell that Smith “‘was as dull a dog as he had ever met with,’ while Boswell, never one to let dull dogs lie, complained when Smith came to London in 1773 that he could not recognise his old tutor when faced with this ‘professed Infidel with a bag wig.’”
Buchan is also aware of the inherent contradictions in Smith’s life as he highlights Smith’s denunciation of the “unjust and oppressive restraints” on foreign imports at the same time that he was being paid £900* a year as a commissioner of customs.
*It appears as if Adam Smith was paid £600 a year as a Scottish Commissioner of Customs. The extra £300 came from his pension for tutoring the Duke of Buccleuch and his younger brother for a few years.
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Oddly enough, a more favorable take on Smith and less favorable take on Rothbard’s critique of him is found in the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, which by astonishing coincidence I had read less than a minute before viewing this blog entry. It also points out some areas in which Smith got it wrong that Rothbard did not point out.
http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae1_1_4.pdf
I for one though could not possibly care less if he was a hypochondriac or was considered dull by Johnson or a bag-wigged infidel by Boswell.
The problem is that he was much less laissez-faire than what is made out to be. Secondly, he was a hypocrite. Moreover, Dr. Johnson and the fair Boswell could rundown a character in minutes, so I’d much rather take their word for it than any other contemporary source which makes for great insight. Read up on their works. Finally, the post was about Smith’s life, thus what you could care or not care less about is a moot point.
Despite all these criticisms, you cannot deny that adam smith was extremely influential.
adam smith wealth of nations laid the foundation for the free market economies of the 21st Century, even though it was conceived over 300 years ago.
He was the founder of modern economics!
Having read Buchan’s book, and Rothbard’s critique of Smith, I assumed that Ptak would demonstrate his assertion with how it supports Rothbard’s ‘thesis’. But not a word!
Ptak merely retells well-known tittle-tattle about Smith, much of it from people not very well amused by him when he did not bow to their superior views of themselves. Dr Johnston’s judgement about Smith being ‘as dull a dog as he had ever met’ may have been influenced by Smith’s review of Johnston’s Dictionary in 1755 (The Edinburgh Review), which he analysed in masterly detail as being ‘insufficiently grammatical’,
Incidentally, reviewers should check their facts. Smith’s salary as a Scottish Commissioner of Customs was not ‘£900′; it was £600 (Iain Ross, The Life of Adam Smith, 1995).
Another hatchet job by the cultural Marxists on a great man of the West.
Reactionary,
No Doubt!~ With those guys in business, is it any wonder that even scrap Iron is being stolen?
what should we do about this
Teenage Boy Killed in California School Shooting
“Murray Rothbard’s thesis that Adam Smith was a somewhat brilliant man without direction and significant insight.”
This sounds like an excellent description of Rothbard to me, the best I have ever heard.
“Buchan is also aware of the inherent contradictions in Smith’s life as he highlights Smith’s denunciation of the “unjust and oppressive restraints” on foreign imports at the same time that he was being paid £900 a year as a commissioner of customs.”
The same could be said of Rothbard, a public employee for most of life, supported by the taxpayer.
See David Friedman’s critique of Rothbard on Smith here http://tinyurl.com/sxzqm. Smith was not the greatest economist who ever lived, and he certainly did not invent economics, but neither was he half as bad as Rothbard makes him out to be. Cantillon and Turgot (both praised by Rothbard) were much less free-trade than Smith.
Marco, your url is giving me a 404 error.
tina, you are completely off topic. I would have assumed you were a spam-bot if your link had been for some kind of product.
Please explain how Austrians are cultural Marxists. It would seem to me that Marxists are cultural Marxists. Most Austrians are rationalists and Christian.
All I seem to get from this article is, again, we should be cautious about deifying any thinker, no matter what certain contributions that thinker made.
Most Austrians, to my observation, are atheistic. In fact, von Mises and Rothbard were both atheists, or at best subscribed to some watered-down deism. And I do not see how anarchy is reconcilable with Christianity. The injunctions contained in I Peter 2 and Romans 13 are pretty explicit.
My characterization is admittedly hyperbolic. While not Marxists in the classical (i.e., economic) sense, anarchists (not necessarily Austrian school economists) share the Marxist goal of the destruction of conservative Western institutions in order to erect a unipolar new world order. (This underscores my second theological objection to anarcho-capitalism: it amounts to a hubristic attempt to rebuild the Tower of Babel.)
In this sense, I am tagging the anarchists like people frequently tag the neo-conservatives as “Trotskyite.”
Reactionary,
1 Samuel 12:25 and Matthew 21:13.
To Hannah’s point: 1Samuel 12:25–”If instead you continue to do evil, both you and your king shall perish.”
And, Matthew 21:13– “He said to them, “It is written,’My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers!”
Hannah, were these the ones you were referring to?
ad matthew 21:13: desoto in money, bank credit and economic cycles offers an understanding of the scence and argues, that jerusalems temple at this time was also a bank, which deposited money and goods for the people. i don’t know the page though…
“anarchists (not necessarily Austrian school economists) share the Marxist goal of the destruction of conservative Western institutions in order to erect a unipolar new world order. (This underscores my second theological objection to anarcho-capitalism: it amounts to a hubristic attempt to rebuild the Tower of Babel.”
When I think Hoppe, Leddihn, Nock etc, I think much the opposite, that these thinkers and most at the LvMI want communities to preserve and even enforce those conservative Western institutions such as the church and family. Their view is basically governance without government.
It seems these voluntarily chosen responsibilities are heavy ones indeed, but it seems they have never have had half the intended positive social effects when the state/politicians were actively promoting them, only when individuals voluntarily agreed that their community would enforce them. Most developments in Western history enforce this view.
Now, if you mean the run-of-the-mill definition of anarchist, the an-socs and comms and that completely-fulfills-the-stereotype-red flag raving youth-bunch (something the socialists have co-opted), then by all means I agree. Another reason to really feel icky about the a-word in terms of modern political discourse.
Brett! Well said.
Jesus was an Anarchist: http://www.anti-state.com/redford/redford4.html
The above seems to be quite well researched.
The anti-state essay is poorly reasoned. There is much about the US and other governments that is anti-Christian, and Christians should not obey ungodly and corrupt governments. But the texts cited by the author do not mandate “anarchy” (an increasingly pregnant and muddled term). In fact, the idea of the level of protection and justice being commensurate with your ability to pay for it is inherently anti-Christian. This is why rulers are ordained by God for the reward of the just, the punishment of evildoers, and protection of the weak against the strong.
There is no fundamental moral problem with government, since Christians are enjoined to honor and obey just rulers, but that government, like all human institutions, is corruptible.
Rephrasing for Reactionary…
There is no fundamental moral problem with murder or thieft, since Christians are enjoined to honor and obey those who don’t murder or steal.
CC
“the punishment of evildoers”…?
Now I’ve heard that somewhere before. Oh yeah. Bush is taking care of that right now in Iraq. Come to think of it he IS ordained by God. I’ve heard that he has a strong Christian following too, so that makes sense now. And yes, I’ve seen evidence that he protects the weak against the strong. Those Halliburton weaklings are well protected now, and those oppressive Iraqi citizens are finally getting their due. It’s finally coming together for me.
Paul,
Evildoers aren’t punished in an anarchist society?
In a decentralized, anarchic society, do you really think criminals would be arrested, informed of their rights, arraigned, given an attorney if they’re too poor to pay for one, allowed a trial by jury, and imprisoned with room, board, medical care, and access to a law library, all at public expense?
Reactionary,
“Evildoers aren’t punished in an anarchist society?”
Hopefully not the ones on the other side of the planet who pose no threat to us. And not the innocent bystanders either.
“In a decentralized, anarchic society, do you really think criminals would be
“1. arrested,
Not until they are proven guilty.
“2. informed of their rights
I think they would be informed of their rights, it would be written in their insurance contract, their community agreement contract, or they’d be notified.
“3. arraigned,
Yes they would be notified of the trial date and invited to attend to defend himself.
“4. given an attorney if they’re too poor to pay for one
They might be if someone wanted to donate these services. They would have no right to demand this service though.
“5. allowed a trial by jury
Customers of insurance or court companies might expect them to provide such a service, yes.
“6. and imprisoned with room, board, medical care, and access to a law library, all at public expense?
No I severely doubt it and hope not. The criminal would be expected to pay restitution for his crime, or the court would award the victim a certain amount of the criminal’s forced labor for restitution. Or if the crime is murder, well it could be kchchchck for the criminal depending on whether customers generally prefer that option and the criminal can’t offer the victim a reason to choose otherwise.
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