Reading “Adam Smith”

Citation

Alvey, J. (1999), "Reading “Adam Smith”", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 26 No. 4, pp. 583-585. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijse.1999.26.4.583.6

Shapiro’s Reading “Adam Smith” is the first postmodern “reading” of Adam Smith. Shapiro constantly refers to the writings of such contemporary theorists as Ricoeur, Derrida, Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, Lyotard, Merleau‐Ponty, Greimas, Mauss, Baudrillard, Bourdieu, and others. We learn something about these writers from “reading” Shapiro’s amazingly short Reading. It is a pity that we learn very little about Smith.

Shapiro asks “how are we to read” Smith (p. xxxiii)? Shapiro replies that “the reading will be confrontational rather than pious” (p. xxxiii). Shapiro explicitly admits that his “focus is not on finding the authentic Adam Smith, whether consistent or contradictory” (p. xxvi). Nor will he attempt “to strip away false or inconsistent representations [of Smith] in order to isolate the “real” Smith” (p. xxvii). In the opening sentence of Shapiro’s preface it is nonchalantly stated that “[t]his is not a book about Adam Smith in the usual sense of the word about, for it is neither a comprehensive explication of his views nor a careful tracing of the sources of them” (p. xxv emphasis in original). According to Shapiro, what he does in his book is what no one has done before, namely, to “catastrophically confront” Smith:

Smith’s texts have yet to experience the catastrophic confrontation they deserve. A catastrophe in its etymological sense is a “turning down”. [Smith] must be turned down by those who want an effective, politicized understanding of modernity (p. xxv).

As Shapiro decided at the outset not even to try to find the “authentic Adam Smith,” it is clear that he could not have taken seriously Smith’s claim to have discovered the truth about nature, human nature, and the best form of society (p. xxvi). Shapiro is only interested in “confronting” and “turning down” Smith. This approach does not lead to thoughtful interpretation.

Having dealt with my major problem with the Reading, let me turn to one smaller criticism, Shapiro’s interpretation of Smith’s literary style. Quoting from the Lectures on Rhetoric (LRBL i.135), Shapiro says that Smith “urges writers to regulate the emotionality of their style, to “lop all exuberances and bring it to that pitch which will be agreeable to those about him” (p. 40). Again quoting from the Lectures on Rhetoric (LRBL i.14), Shapiro claims that “Smith eschews all figuration and rhetoric” (p. 112, see also pp. 106, 125). In Shapiro’s view, Smith understood the aim of writing to be “communication and lucidity ‐ short, simple syntax, avoidance of elaborate figuration, and so on” (p. 39). “For Smith, the word must be faithful to the object; it must eschew rhetorical flourish, colour, and passion in order to claim its only prize, accuracy” (p. 123). In short, “Smith believed that rhetoric does not belong in scientific treatises” such as his own (p. 50). Shapiro argues that Smith uses the plain style because his “notion of persuasion does not… assume that there is a reigning ideology that must be overturned” (p. 40). But Shapiro takes the Lectures on Rhetoric too literally and does not properly examine the actual style employed by Smith in his published works, especially his writings on mercantilism. Smith’s works contain a range of writing styles, including, at times, metaphor and rhetoric. It is ridiculous to claim, as Shapiro does, that “Smith’s writing … was insensitive to its grammatical, rhetorical, and narrative impositions” (p. 125).

There are so many faults with the detail of the Reading that it would be pointless listing them. Clearly Shapiro spent little time pondering Smith in detail. He spent even less time considering the vast secondary literature on Smith. I persevered through the book in the hope that there might be something of interest buried in it. Fortunately, this did turn out to be the case. Let me turn to one positive aspect of the Reading.

I found Shapiro’s discussion of Smith’s view of history particularly interesting. He refers to Smith’s “primarily linear narratives of the changes from early hunter‐gatherer economies to commercial ones” (p. 8 emphasis added, see also pp. 32‐3, 55, 82, 104). According to Shapiro, in Smith there is a:

natural progression of the art of government, which is a more‐or‐less materialist version of the evolution of government forms. He sees a consistent match wherein the mode of government appropriate to the mode of production and exchange always seems to emerge (p. 8).

Shapiro cites Veblen’s interpretation of Smith at some length (Veblen, 1948, pp. 241‐8). Veblen’s interpretation deserves much greater attention than it has received in the Smith literature. According to Veblen’s interpretation, “there is a wholesome trend in the natural course of things” in Smith (p. 50 quoting Veblen, 1948, p. 241). Smith’s theory of history is “both teleological and “extra‐mechanical” inasmuch as the sequence through which nature’s forces operate has a continuity which can be interrupted” (pp. 50‐1 quoting Veblen, 1948, p. 243). The teleological elements in Smith’s presentation of history are called “linear narratives” by Shapiro; these “legendary or mythic” accounts comprise “historical fables and anthropological fantasies” (pp. 8, 56‐7). “In the case of the Wealth of Nations much of the mythicization stems from the ontology surrounding Smith’s text, one positing a guiding, transcendent universe with purposeful intent” (p. 57). Smith’s “virtually unbounded optimism … guaranteed an order that progressed toward general prosperity and broadly distributed human contentment” (p. 103; see also pp. xxxii, 68). This is a very interesting piece of interpretation.

It recognizes the teleological element in many of Smith’s views of history. Unlike many of Shapiro’s comments, this has a good deal of textual support. It is also interesting because it presents a continuity, that some have rejected, between Smith’s views on religion in The Wealth of Nations and the Theory of Moral Sentiments. Nevertheless, Shapiro’s interpretation stresses only one side of Smith’s view of history. (This point I have argued in a number of places: see Alvey, 1996.) There is another set of pessimistic propositions that are sketched by Smith which are more consistent with a cyclical theory.

Despite making some interesting points, I have little doubt that Shapiro’s Reading will not be read in 20 years’ time. It will only last as long as the current fad of postmodernism lasts. On the other hand, I am confident that Smith’s writings, having already survived 200 years of criticism and commentary, will continue to be read long after postmodernism is forgotten.