A close-up of the book cover. Photo: allen lane.
‘Adam Smith: What he thought and why it matters’, by Jesse Norman
Review by Richard Seebohm
Jesse Norman’s new book is a bravura manifesto of how our politics and economics should be run. Many of us may have heard of The Wealth of Nations with its conceptualisation of markets and the ‘invisible hand’ that steers them. But Adam Smith also wrote its later chapters with much more nuanced ideas. His other vital book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, is less well known.
My wife and I used to own shares in a company now called 3i Group plc, which my father once chaired. One day someone telephoned to get us to exchange our shares for some investment of his own. Afterwards I found myself wishing I had said: ‘Does your wife know how you earn your living?’ What I had inadvertently reached was the key feature of Smith’s Moral Sentiments. When you are engaged in a deal or discussion with someone, you should consider how your behaviour would be seen and judged by an (imaginary) third person.
Smith saw no need to seek a faith-based cause for ethical behaviour. Preachers have tried to teach their fallible flocks that the hope of an afterlife reward should lead them to observe (divinely-revealed) rules. Hamlet said: ‘Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.’ But cowardice may be more likely to override conscience if you think nobody will know if you let your standards slip. Various strands of Christianity have tried to introduce the independent eye. Catholics have confession to a priest. John Wesley set up ‘class meetings’ for Methodist converts to unburden themselves. Present day evangelicals are led to expose their past in testimonies. Friends, in past centuries at least, kept an eye on each other’s business dealings, ensuring that no customer or client was defrauded. Friends travelling in the ministry (a practice seen less often nowadays) used to have another Friend appointed to go with them as a minder. The Meeting for Clearness is perhaps a survival of this.
Where the witness concept is most lacking is in hierarchical organisations in the public, private and charitable sectors where no one dares to tell the truth to the next level up. And at the top you do not dare to tell the truth to yourself. You tend to see what you have, however it was won, as an entitlement. I may here seem sanctimonious, but in fact it is Jesse Norman who focusses his venom on ‘crony capitalism’. This was identified (but not named) by Adam Smith in the shape of the East India Company. These companies extracted – and still extract – ‘economic rent’ by exploiting monopoly opportunities, trade barriers, and political advantages won by lobbying. For Smith and Norman, much hinges on the rule of law and on the absence of political obsessions, which Smith called systems. These may be Marxism, militarism or sheer lust for power. The vulnerable virtues are trust, and regard for one’s opponents and counterparties, both in politics and in commerce.
I can hardly begin to explain the way this book aligns with Quaker history and our testimonies of today. I hope it soon comes out in paperback.
