{"id":929,"date":"2011-03-22T16:04:24","date_gmt":"2011-03-22T20:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/?p=929"},"modified":"2011-03-22T16:04:24","modified_gmt":"2011-03-22T20:04:24","slug":"das-capitalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/2011\/03\/22\/das-capitalist\/","title":{"rendered":"Das Capitalist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>George Scialabba recently offered a review of <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Adam-Smith-Enlightened-Walpole-Eighteenth-C\/dp\/0300169272\">Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life<\/a><\/em> by Nicholas Phillipson in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amconmag.com\/blog\/das_capitalist_adam_smith\/\">The American Conservative<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 The piece gives greater context to the life of Adam Smith, though not without acknowledging the inherent difficulty in so doing:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>He was shy, destroyed most of his letters, and did not seem to relish  giving brilliant performances, either in print or in conversation. He  never fell afoul of civil or religious authority, had no mistresses, and  engaged in no public quarrels.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It further helps elucidate the nuances of Smith, who in his prolific ideology has often been himself caricatured\u00a0 into a polemic rambler:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Everyone knows, of course, what Adam Smith stood for: free trade, the  division of labor, the minimal state, the invisible hand, the  illimitable growth of wants and needs. \u201cIt is not from the benevolence  of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but  from their regard to their own interest.\u201d \u201cEvery individual \u2026 intends  only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an  invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.\u201d  \u201cLittle else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of  opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a  tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by  the natural course of things.\u201d Case closed.<\/p>\n<p>What everyone knows is seldom altogether wrong; but often it is not  altogether right, either. As Emma Rothschild notes at the outset of <em>Economic Sentiments,<\/em> her superb study of Smith and Condorcet, \u201cThey think and write about  self-interest and competition, about institutions and corporations,  about the \u2018market\u2019 and the \u2018state.\u2019 But the words mean different things  to them, and their connotation is of a different, and sometimes of an  opposite, politics.\u201d It is far from obvious that Smith would have  entertained cordial feelings toward Alan Greenspan or Margaret Thatcher.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Do you agree with this portrayal of Smith?\u00a0 Do his writings match up? does it change your opinion of him?\u00a0 feel free to leave any comments below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>George Scialabba recently offered a review of Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life by Nicholas Phillipson in The American Conservative.\u00a0 The piece gives greater context to the life of Adam Smith, though not without acknowledging the inherent difficulty in so doing: He was shy, destroyed most of his letters, and did not seem to relish giving [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1284,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3856],"tags":[3837,5390,5391],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=929"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":935,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions\/935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}