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Raymond J. de Souza: Adam Smith's profoundly moral economic philosophy

He understood that one could do well by doing good

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Readers will extend sympathy to me if I return to last Saturday’s column about Pierre Poilievre’s recent rhetorical outings. Adam Smith, after all, says that they will.

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Poilievre delivered a substantive address in London that showed him at his best, a most welcome development for a putative prime minister. This week, after four years of rebuffing one of Canada’s leading political analysts, Poilievre granted a very thoughtful interview to Paul Wells, dealing substantively with economic philosophy and policy.

Raymond J. de Souza: Adam Smith's profoundly moral economic philosophy Back to video

For this writer, having taught economics and philosophy for 20 years at Queen’s University, it is a happy thing that Canada boasts a prime minister and leader of the opposition who are capable of reasoned reflections on economic philosophy.

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Noting the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776) this month, Poilievre’s London address stressed that the landmark work had to be understood in light of Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). My students have heard me bang on about that for two decades, so Poilievre’s claim received from me a most sympathetic hearing. The London speech was reprised on Monday in these pages, the precise date of the anniversary.

Poilievre, calling Smith “probably the best-known and least-read economist” in his op-ed, demonstrated that the caricature of Smith as an apologist for the rapacious and avaricious capitalist, wringing his fortune from the sweat of the workingman’s brow, is false. To the contrary, Smith understood entrepreneurship as analogous to morally good action.

“When Smith wrote that we expect our dinner not from the benevolence of the butcher, brewer or baker, but from their own self-interest, he was not glorifying greed but rather describing obvious incentives,” Poilievre said in London. “In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he reminds us that human beings are bound together by something he called ‘sympathy’ — by placing ourselves in the other person’s situation and seeing through their eyes, thus our interest becomes their interest.”

Smith’s concept of “sympathy” is key. In the Theory of Moral Sentiments, he conceives the moral act in three stages.

The first is the capacity to sympathize with the other, by which is meant my capacity to recognize the other as one like myself, sharing a common nature, common circumstances, common goals. The other is like me, so I can know his needs, his desires, his aspirations, his capacities — that’s “sympathy.”

The second stage is imagination. I can imagine how the other would like to be treated. This creativity is essential to moral reasoning. I can imagine how the other would like to be treated because I sympathize with him. He might in fact like to be treated as I would like to be treated. That is so philosophically foundational that nearly every culture has a version of this Golden Rule.

The third stage is benevolence. Once I imagine how the other would like to be treated, how then should I act? Why treat him well instead of poorly? I do so out of benevolence. This literal good will toward another needs some other foundation though.

Why treat others benevolently? That mandate comes from an external source, for most people usually religion. Hence the Golden Rule — “whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” (Matthew 7:12). Indeed, that benevolence reaches far: “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).

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That is Smith’s moral philosophy. He then applies it to economic relations.

Sympathy enables me to recognize my customer, my supplier, my partners, my workers, as ones like me. My creativity allows me to imagine how to provide for them as they would like. But why should I be benevolent in my economic relations?

Therein lies Smith’s genius. I don’t need, in economic matters, an external moral mandate. Rather, self-interest can replace benevolence in matters of free economic exchange. Freely-chosen economic relationships will not endure if one side is cheating or exploiting the other. In an environment of authentic economic freedom, self-interest can play the role of benevolence in getting people to treat strangers well. They do well by doing good, as the common aphorism is heard in economics as discussed by philosophers and theologians.

They do not need to desire to do good. More people are motivated by self-interest than high ideals, so if self-interest can achieve what benevolence can do, it means more people doing good, which is a happy thing.

It is usually in commercial interactions that we say to strangers: “Are you in need of some assistance? How may I help you? May I be of service?”

Smith’s great achievement was in seeing how economic self-interest can support, even mimic, benevolence. His supremely encouraging and noble vision is that self-interest can complement benevolence. Do well by doing good.

“Indeed, if sympathy means caring truly and actively about the other fellow’s wants and needs, then no one is more sympathetic than the entrepreneurial businessman who gets ahead by supplying the needs and wants of others,” said Poilievre in London.

It is wrong to say “no one” is more sympathetic than the entrepreneur, for there are many who sacrifice their own good — which entrepreneurs do not — for others, including parents, and missionaries, and martyrs. But it is right to celebrate, 250 years on, that Smith’s economic vision remains a profoundly moral one. It thus deserves a far more sympathetic hearing than it usually gets.

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