Speaker
Description
Early forerunners of political economy, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, worked largely within a paradigm shaped by Machiavelli’s approach to politics. Setting aside the customary constraints of Judeo-Christian morality, this Machiavellian approach was more like an expansion and normalization of the old Roman dictum salus populi, suprema lex—the salvation of the people is the highest law. The moral code that states pursued must, in this tradition, be separate and distinct from the one that governs the lives of individuals. “The end justifies the means” is a stark but not unrepresentative example of this widespread ragione di stato. Even Mandeville’s “Private Vices, Publick Benefits” pays homage to the magnetic appeal of this moral exceptionalism.
A brief survey of the conduct of twenty-first-century governments from the ancient empires of Eurasia prompts the reflection that this Machiavellian, state-centered tradition of national wealth-creation might well have continued uninterrupted over five hundred years.
But it didn’t. When Adam Smith put a diffuse and eclectic discourse of “political economy” onto a firm and rigorous foundation, he imparted to it an inextricably moral dimension. Though often overlooked or misunderstood, the moral dimension is actually integral (or so I shall argue) to the modern project of political economy itself.
In this paper, I will address the subtle ways in which Smith put the moral individual at the very center of modern economic thought.
